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OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY
OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY
BY
AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL
Keswick Missionary C.E.Z.M.S.
AUTHOR OF "THINGS AS THEY ARK," ETC.
WITH PREFACE BY
REV. T. WALKER
C.M.S. South India
HE MUST REIGN
LONDON: MORGAN AND SCOTT
(OFFICE OF "tftlje djmtian")
12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.
And may be ordered of any Bookseller
1906
t> «*" ^ -
CMtr
To
Indraneela's Atah
DOHNAVUR
TlNNEVELLY DISTRICT
SOUTH INDIA
OCTOKEK IQ06
Preface
I HAVE been frequently asked by readers of Miss
Wilson-Carmichael's former book, Things as They
Are, and sometimes with considerable incredulity,
" But is it really true ? "
I take this opportunity of saying, once for all, that,
so far as my experience goes, after twenty years of
Missionary work in Southern India, I can endorse it as
quite true. An Indian civilian, whose duties lie in that
part of this great continent with which the book specially
deals, expressed to us his surprise that anyone should be
startled by what they call its " sad revelations " ; for, as
he said, " they are commonplaces to many of us out here."
Possibly he had seen things " under the surface," which
do not lie patent to the view of all, whether missionaries
or civilians. However that may be, I repeat my personal
testimony that Miss Carmichael has accurately described
" things as they are," writing from a special standpoint.
It is true, absolutely true, that indifference to the glad
tidings of the Gospel is the order of the day among the
multitude of non-Christians who surround us here. As
Dr. Miller put it so well at the Keswick Convention of
1903, speaking of the people of Hausaland, " Make no
mistake. They do not want the Gospel ; but they sorely
need the Gospel."
vii
viii PREFACE
It is true again, absolutely true, that untold cruelties
abound in heathendom. While we missionaries gladly
recognise the good qualities of many of our Hindu friends,
and love the people among whom we work, we should
yet be criminally blind if we shut our eyes to ugly facts.
The tyranny of caste leads to evils which are beyond
words to tell. Why should the supporters of Foreign
Missions, who quote and requote the text on Missionary
platforms at home, " All the earth is full of darkness and
cruel habitations," be startled and shocked when they are
plied with facts, hot from actual experience, which after
all are only concrete illustrations of the platform text ?
It is true also, absolutely true, that here, in Southern
India, we are " skirting the abyss," an abyss which is
deep and foul beyond description, and yet is glorified, to
Hindu eyes, by the sanctions of religion. Growing
knowledge and accumulating information are only serving
to make the awful darkness of that fell abyss more and
more visible to view.
Once more, it is true, absolutely true, that the fight is
an uphill one. With all my might would I emphasise
this fact. India has not yet been won. Thank God for
what has been done; and Miss Carmichael was not
ignorant of it when she wrote her book, as will be clear
to anyone who reads between the lines. But let there
be no doubt about it ; the upper ranks of Hindu society
show a practically unbroken front. The Shah Najafs
are not yet taken. The citadels of Hinduism and
Mohammedanism frown down haughtily on our feeble
and desultory attacks. What then ? Have we no
soldier-spirit in us ? Shall we say, like some of Nehe-
miah's builders when difficulties loomed ahead, " The
strength of the bearer of burdens is decayed, and there
is much rubbish, so that we are not able to build the
PREFACE ix
wall ? " Or shall we not rather say, with grand old
Nehemiah himself, whose courage only rose with danger,
" Be not afraid of them ; remember the Lord which is
great and terrible, and fight " ?
When the " Black Week " in South Africa seemed to
bring disaster on disaster to British arms, it only served
to stimulate the courage of our people, and to nerve
them for the fight. The whole Empire rose, as one man,
in the strength of a firm determination, " This thing
must be carried through." So be it with the Christian
Church. Because the odds against us are so great, and
because the task is so stupendous, and because " things as
they are " seem otherwise than we had hoped, brothers !
let us face the work in deadly earnest ; let us " remember
the Lord " and "fight"
The present volume is a sort of sequel to Things as
They Are. Let me say of this book also, that you may
rely on its accuracy ; it is a description of facts ; it is
certainly true. It offers to sinking spirits something of
a cordial in the shape of Overweights of Joy. But it is
not intended, for a moment, to " tone down " the facts of
its predecessor. It would not be true if it did. And
Truth (with a capital "T") is the main thing. "We
can do nothing against the Truth, but for the Truth."
T. WALKER, C.M .8.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. "BEFORE THE GODS WILL I SING" . . .1
II. THE FORT ...... 5
III. HE MAKETH THE STARS . . . .14
IV. "Lo! THESE ARE PARTS OF HlS WAYS " . .21
V. "YET" 26
VI. OPENED . ..... 34
VII. THE CLAN 40
VIII. THE CLUE . ... 47
IX. THE SHAH NAJAF . . . . .52
X. " FOLLOW THE GLEAM " . . . .60
XI. "THE GRACE OF THE PEOPLE TO COME" . . 67
XII. ALONE 78
XIII "No BEAUTY THAT WE SHOULD DESIRE HIM" . 89
XIV. "WITH His STRIPES WE ARE HEALED" . . 98
XV. "HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OF HlS SOUL " . 104
XVI. "NOT PEACE, BUT A SWORD". . . .113
XVII. "AT VARIANCE" 120
XVIII. " ALL THESE THINGS " 132
XIX. GARDENS BY THE RIVER'S SIDE . . .146
XX. A SINGING BIRD IN GOD'S GARDEN . . 154
XXI. DRY LAND 162
XXII. "LET IT BRING FORTH TENDER GRASS" . . 169
xi
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIII. "AND IT WAS so" . . 174
XXIV. "HOLD ME ON WITH A STEADY PACE" . .183
XXV. DARKENED WINDOWS . . . .191
XXVI. GRAVES WHICH APPEAR NOT . . . 200
XXVII. "DAGON MUST STOOP" . . . .212
XXVIII. THE SPACES BETWEEN . . 220
XXIX. MOSAIC ..... .230
XXX. BACKGROUND . . . . . .241
XXXI. WARPED LAND . ... 250
XXXII. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR . . . .260
XXXIII. GREEN CLOUDS AND THE LAMPS OF GOD'S VILLAGE 268
XXXIV. LOOSED 279
XXXV. PERSIST . . . . . .285
XXXVI. THE SONG OF THE LORD 291
Illustrations
Two LITTLE OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY . . . Frontispiece
ROCK BELOW TIGER'S CAVE ON THE GHAUT KOAD
LEADING UP PROM THE PLAINS . . . Facing page 5
" LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE? CHRISTIANS AT HOME?" „ 15
STAR'S LITTLE COUSIN . . . . „ 17
IN THE SHAH NAJAF :
TYPE No. 1. THE BRAHMAN . „ 53
2. WORKERS IN GOLD . „ 55
3. WORKERS IN IRON . „ 67
4. WORKERS IN WOOD . „ 58
A DROP FROM THE SEA ; A GRAIN FROM THE HEAP „ 75
NELBETTA (THE SPLIT ROCK), NEDUVATAN . . „ 78
Showing the plateau and the plains 4000 feet
below.
"THEIR INSCRUTABLE FACES TOLD ME NOTHING " . „ 80
MOUNTAIN BOUNDARY BETWEEN BRITISH INDIA AND
TRAVANCORE . . . . „ 113
The double-peaked shadow is cast by Makurti,
from which mountain the photo was taken.
LOTUS ........ 121
BRILLIANCE ....... 123
LOTUS' AUNT AND LITTLE COUSIN . . „ 124
LOTUS' STUDENT COUSIN . . . „ 130
TAKEN IN OUR COMPOUND . . . „ 134
xiii
XIV
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TEMPLE MUSICIAN
ONE OP THE ORTHODOX RELATIONS OF THE
BRAHMAN WIDOW ....
ON THE VERANDAH .....
THE FALLS OF DARKNESS, NEAR SESSPARA
LAMB'S ROCK .....
In the middle distance is the Droog from
whose summit Tiboo Sahib is said to have
hurled his prisoners down the precipice.
TYPES ......
TYPICAL YOUNG WIFE ....
EAGLE CLIFF : SHOWING THE PLAINS ON THE
EASTERN SIDE .....
ITINERATING WORK ON THE PHYSICAL SIDE
SESSPARA TOP .....
When last we went to Sesspara the valley
and all the surrounding hills were completely
covered by sunlit mist. We stood as it were
on the edge of the world and looked over.
There was nothing anywhere to be seen but a
shining dream of white.
LAV ANA ......
PREENA AND LAV ANA ....
FIREFLY AND ANOTHER CHILD
How WE CRADLE OUR BABIES
RUKMA AND PREEYA .....
LOLA AND LEELA .....
SUNSET ON THH FOOTHILLS : FROM MAKURTI PEAK
Facing page 136
140
142
146
183
185
187
221
230
241
253
254
256
258
261
265
291
"I have more than an
Overweight of Joy"
ii CUR. vii. 4
Conybtare and Howstn's Translation
The Photographs
THE photos of village and town's folk, usually typical of
life and character on the plains, were taken by the
comrade known as "The Picture-catching Missie Animal,"
Those of our little children were given by another friend.
Those of the mountains are the work of an expert in capturing
the spirit of the wilds. Several of the photographs are rare,
notably the one which shows the curious double-peaked
shadow of the mountain from which the photo was taken.
These mountains, the thousand mile range of the Western
Ghauts, whether South by our homeside at Dohnavur, or four
hundred miles North where great arms branch off and form
the Nilgiri (Blue Mountain) group, at all times, in all moods,
are strength and inspiration to us, veritable Overweights of
Joy. It would be ungrateful not to share what can be shared
of them with you. But thoroughly to enjoy a scenery photo
imagine yourself and your camera camping out on the
mountains. Fill the forests with life, the clouds with move-
ment. Flood all the wide spaces with light and with colour.
Then let the wind blow over the uplands, and stir the grasses
and the little mountain flowers at your feet.
OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY
CHAPTER I
"Before the gods will I sing"
THE main purpose of this book is single and simple.
It is to let the song out before the gods in pos-
session here. A sentence spoken in the Keswick
Convention some years ago suggested the thought.
The sentence, as it reached us in South India, ran
thus:
" I will praise Thee with my whole heart ; before the
gods will I sing praise unto Thee " — his (the Psalmist's)
glad resolve to sing praises unto his God, not in a clear
and open atmosphere, but before the gods, the giant
powers which lay behind the giant heathenism of his
day. He, as it were, looked them in the face, and
weighed their strength and force ; and although they
seemed to suggest the hopelessness of the cause of God,
he was not moved. " Before the gods will I sing praise
unto Thee."
If this book's atmosphere is dark it is because the
2 "BEFORE THE GODS WILL I SING "
gods, the giant powers which lie behind the subtle
systems of our day, still exist in strength and force.
The song is sung in the night : let no one dream the
night has passed.
Here and there through the valley of Christendom in
India there has been a noise and a shaking, and a
Coming of the Breath. We have seen and heard
something which in its mystery and spontaneity passes
anything we knew before. But we have not seen India
stirred. No movement in the valley has as yet affected
those wastes of desolation that rise like mountains bare
and bleak and utterly lifeless around us. " Bow Thy
heavens, 0 Lord, and come down : touch the mountains
and they shall smoke " — we have not seen that yet
We are waiting to see such a manifestation of Divine
energy as shall convince the Hindu and Mohammedan
world that the LOBD is GOD. And now in the moment
of pause before the coming of the Power, now while we
wait, we sing.
The book is meant mainly for those who read Things
as They Are, and were discouraged by it. We know
there were some who in reading it did not catch the
under-song that sang through the bitter battle. The
Tamil words on the cover, " Victory to Jesus," were not
interpreted. They put the book down in despair —
" if these things are so, is prayer answered at all ?
Is it worth while going on ? " " Nay, do not wrong
Him by thy heavy thought," let Overweights answer
earnestly. Prayer is being answered. It is worth while
going on.
But though we would praise Him with our song, His
A FOREWORD 3
Word alone is the cause of our sure confidence. The
song may brighten the day's work, and lighten the very
night, but nothing short of the Word of the Lord stands
strong through everything. This battle is His. The
victory was won on the Resurrection morning. Christ
our King is King of the ages. Although we could not
sing we would still go on.
The " we " of the book refers usually to our small
band here, Rev. T. Walker, Mrs. Walker, and our Indian
comrades, who on the women's side are the faithful
Golden, Pearl, and Blessing, and, of late years, Star, Joy,
Gladness,1 and others, without whose loyal co-operation
the work that has grown among the Temple-children
would have been impossible. But though for the sake
of straightforward story-telling I explain the personnel,
there is nothing we should so deprecate as the focusing
of attention upon us. Rather overlook us, and look
wherever in all the field you have a friend who would
welcome the cheer of a freshened affection, and the
sympathy which braces because it understands.
Perhaps in order to avoid needless misunderstanding
it should be said at the outset that we write from Old
India, and that we do not profess to touch upon aspects
and problems affecting New India and India in transition,
matters so delicate and intricate that they are better left
to abler pens. Each phase of life as we find it here is
a study in itself. Each is intensely interesting. But
the voice that speaks through these pages, if indeed we
have caught it clearly enough to make it articulate to
others, is the voice of the old land : for of the three
1 Translated names.
4 "BEFORE THE GODS WILL I SING"
distinct voices sounding in India to-day, we have heard
it longest and know it best.
Finally, we have tried to be true. We cannot say
more. Those who have tried to be true know how
difficult truth-telling is, perhaps because we see so little
of the whole truth at a time. We found a large shell
on the shore one day, blackened at the edges, iridescent
above. It lay where the wave had washed it, wet and
shining on the sand. The south-west monsoon had
brought us many beautiful things. The sand was strewn
with them. But this special shell for loveliness lay alone
among them, and we stopped before we picked it up to
look at it in its setting of sand, which on that part of
the coast sparkles as if garnet dust had been sprinkled
over it. Then we saw that the little Crustacea had
stopped to look at it too. They were crawling over it
and into it and all about it ; but they did not see it as a
whole. They were too small. Truth is like that shell.
We are like the infant crabs and beach fleas. Perhaps
the most we can hope to do is to tell the changeful
colours of the little bit of the shell we see, avoiding
over-colouring as we would avoid a lie. And we can
resist the temptation to omit all mention of the broken,
blackened edges of the shell.
CHAPTER II
The Fort
IT was early afternoon on the edge of a South Indian
town, at the place where it touches the desert. It
was hot, but those happy little sun -birds, the
children, darted about in the sunshine, or played in the
doubtful shadow of the palms which border the Brahman
street. There were vivid splashes of colour where the
little children played, otherwise the street was colourless
and empty, for the people who lend it life were out of
sight in the close dark of windowless rooms, trying to
feel cool. To the left of where we stood, above house-
tops and palms, rose the central Temple tower, carved
in stone for a hundred feet. A wall faced us, crossing
the end of the street.
The wall was of clay, clumsily but massively built,
rough with uneven additions and patches, the work of
careless generations. It was bare and ugly, and covered,
as all the world was then, with the dust of rainless
months. The little flowers and grasses that had struggled
for life on its ridges, in the last wet season, had been
burnt up long ago. Only their famished shreds were
left to tell how the poor wild things had tried to decorate
man's prosaic. But green trees showed above it. We
wondered what was inside.
6 THE FORT
A door was set deep in the wall, facing the Brahman
street. We knocked, but no answer came. Then
friendly voices called us from across the street, and we
saw that friendly faces were watching us from verandah-
shaded doorways. We crossed again, sat down gratefully
in the shadowy recess of a verandah, and questioned our
new friends about the place behind the wall. But India,
though frank, is reticent. The door at which we had
knocked was always locked. The Fort lay behind the
wall. This was all they cared to say. So we talked of
other things for awhile, until we had passed the first
boundary-line fencing us off from their confidence, and
they told us part of what they knew, the pith of which
lay in the fact that there were people in the Fort whose
ways were not as theirs, and therefore most uninteresting,
unworthy our inquiry. The women, they told us, never
came outside. Never till death was a woman seen out.
And even then she was not seen. She was sewn in a
sack and carried out by a gate in the wall on the other
side. Two such gates lay on that side. By one dead
women were carried out, and by the other, men. No
townsman ever went into the Fort. All men of all
castes were strictly forbidden, except the servants of the
Fort who tilled the Fort lands outside. There was no
stringent law about women ; but no woman they knew
had ever gone in. " May we go in ? " we asked.
The question came as a surprise. Every face was a
blank. They had never thought of going in. And yet
they had lived all their lives within sound of a laugh
or a cry from the walls. The East and the West meet
often, but sometimes they walk apart. Perhaps the
WHY GO IN ? 7
Eastern way is the more dignified. Why should we pry
into what, for probably excellent reasons, our neighbour
has concealed ?
Something a little less fine, may be, is mixed up with
this sentiment ; for the women's remarks hardly suggested
the sublime. " Why go in ? There is nothing to see.
The people are not like us. They are mere animals ;
poor jungle creatures." Then after a pause came the
hesitating after-thought : " Once, it is said, a white
woman went in, and nothing evil befell her " — as if a
thought of evil had ever crossed one's mind ! " But this
is foolish talking ; you would be as a parrot watching
the silk cotton pod [the pod ripens, the wind blows the
light-winged seed away, the parrot gets nothing] ; for
even if they let you pass the wall, you might wait for a
lifetime and never see a woman. Each lives in her
house with the door fast shut."
There is a curious instinct in our race, which always
wants to explore the unknown, and finds in discourage-
ment impetus. This moved within us as the women
talked. " It is hot, so hot," they repeated dissuadingly.
" Why go out in such a heat ? " But we went.
It was certainly hot. There was no shade. The
wall seemed to concentrate heat, and throb it out to us.
Below, the dust struck hot through one's shoes. Above,
the sky overflowed with light, a clear white blaze of heat.
There is a beautiful story in the " Kamayana " (one of
India's epics) which tells how Kama, Prince of Oudh,
and Lakshman, his noble young brother, while journeying
with their spiritual guide through forest and plain, came
to an arid desert, " so hot that the tongue would scorch
8 THE FORT
if it tried to describe it." But the guide taught the lads
a certain charm, and as they chanted it the fiery ground
changed for them into cool water springs. We thought
of this old tale then. We have a Charm by which life's
glowing sand becomes a pool, and even the common fiery
ground to be trodden under common feet is cooled by
the Charm for us. So, hardly minding about the heat,
we traced the wall further, and came to a door fitted with
huge locks and bars, and a hinge that looked centuries
old. The door was open. We went in. A white-washed
wall built half-way across intercepted the view. We stood
there for a moment, and then went on, passed another
wall, mud-built and broken, and saw fine tamarind trees
shading the approach, and altars guarding it; beyond
stood picturesque groups of red-roofed houses, and great
stacks of straw. We had no time to see more ; for
before we reached the houses an old man met us, and
leading us back to the door, asked us our business.
He was a very old man. From his ears hung long
gold rings. His dress was the loin-cloth and scarf of the
South. His manners were those of a chief. " These
tidings," he said, after listening a little, " are excellent
for those outside, the ignorant people of the town. But
we of the Fort are different. We require nothing
external. Nor do we desire it," he added, " so kindly
swiftly retire."
A year passed before we had an opportunity of
attempting the Fort again. But such a year need not
be wasted, and we went with hope renewed. We tried
to find the head of the Clan, to win his consent to our
visiting it, but no one outside could direct us to him ;
N AT LAST 9
so believing we were meant to go in, and that the
way would be otherwise opened, and asking that the
very light might be spread as a covering for us to
veil us from any who would disapprove, we walked
quietly in.
This time we were not turned back. Unhindered we
wandered through silent streets, so strangely silent that
they seemed like streets in a city of the dead. The
houses were solidly built, and often enclosed in courtyard
walls. Their windows were few, and heavily barred.
We stopped before one notable house, three-storied,
built of stone and brick, coloured buff, terra-cotta, and
blue. There was some fine wood-carving in the lower
verandah, and the upper balcony was decorated with a
pineapple device. There were small outhouses near,
and a deep empty well, cut in a regular spiral. But
not a woman or a child was visible anywhere. In the
distance we saw men, but they did not see us. The
blaze of noontide covered us as with a shining screen.
We walked on unaccosted, down a short street, with four
small quaint houses on either side, all shut up. They
reminded one of a book often examined in childish days,
which had a lock and key . What wonderful things must
be inside, too wonderful for everyday reading, and so it
is locked up we thought, never imagining then, as we
handled it almost reverently, that the wonderful things
concerned mere money matters. But here there was a
difference. Wonderful things were most surely inside.
Only the old house-book was locked, and the key hung
out of reach. We sat down on one of the little stone
verandahs, facing an iron-clamped door. No one saw us,
10 THE FORT
for no windows looked out on the street. The stillness
was oppressive. Was the place asleep or dead ?
At last the door opposite opened. A woman looked
out. She was just going to slam it, dismayed, when a
smile reassured her, and before she could make up her
mind what to do, we were on the other side of the
narrow street, persuading her to let us sit on her
verandah, and to keep her door open six inches, and let
us talk to her.
She was a pleasant-faced motherly woman, this pro-
duct of a system considered exclusive even in exclusive
India. She had the peculiar sweetness and grace of the
typical Indian woman of gentle birth. There was the
flash of quiet humour too. She was very human. Had
she lost anything after all by her long exclusiveness ?
Perhaps her life had included life's essentials ; she had
her home. We talked with her, and after her first
surprise had passed, she talked with us. Then we knew
what she had lost.
For we had not come to play in the shallows, to
study character or creed, or a new and suggestive prob-
lem. We had come to speak to the soul in the name
of God about that which concerned it infinitely. The
first thing, then, was to find the soul, and only those
who have talked to one whose mind is as a fast closed
outer room, know how much may hinder the finding of a
way into the far more fast closed inner room we call the
soul.
The woman listened as one asleep. The message we
had brought was something so remote from anything
she had heard before, that it fell on her ear as a strange
FURTHER IN 11
song sung to a bewildering tune. How could it be
otherwise ? The " murmur of the world " outside had
never reached her. Her range of vision, mental as well
as physical, was bounded almost absolutely by the wall
that surrounded her house. It is true that the call that
wakens often comes from within, but oftener surely it
comes from without. This woman's world knew no
without, and much of the meaning of the within was
hidden from her. We do not realise until we think
about it, how much we owe to the largeness of our
environment. Think of the littleness of her's.
But even the narrowest Indian horizon is usually widened
by something of the culture of the past. The nation has
its mythical history handed down in poetry, sung rather,
through the ages, the young voice catching up the song
where the old fails. I listened to our sweeper woman
the other day, as she crooned a lullaby. It was the
story of Rama and his queen that she sang to the baby —
a beautiful old-world tale. But that mud wall seemed
to have shut out even the song. A reference to one of
its illustrations, which, had this woman known it, would
have lighted one of the words we were using, did not
surprise her into the accustomed sign of recognition.
There was the less to go upon, the fewer stepping-stones
by which we might hope to pass from the known to the
unknown in her experience. We found she kcaw almost
nothing of her own religion. A South Indian wife and
mother rarely feels her need of God. It is the childless
wife, and the widow, who turn to something outside them-
selves, and seek by fastings and penance to propitiate
that Something, or elude it, or persuade it, so to speak,
12 THE FORT
to look elsewhere. This woman was happy. Husband,
children, plenty of jewels, she had all these ; what more
did she want ?
Naturally, as always in such cases, we kept to the ele-
mentary. We told her that God loved her, and would save
her from her sin. But God meant Siva to her, so that
word needed much explanation. Love was a word she
more perfectly understood. How glad we are to have that
one word which belongs to the universal language. Sin
meant ceremonial defilement, such as would be incurred
by touching us, or eating food other than that prescribed
by her caste. This word kept us a long time. Salvation
meant temporal help. The thought had to be opened
out before even a glimmer of its true meaning could
dawn upon her. This development of idea took time.
" Go and tell them God loves them " sounds beautiful
and easy. It is beautiful, indeed ; but so to do it that
it shall be effective is not easy. The words may seem
to be understood, and smiles and appreciative gestures
often delude us into imagining the truth behind the
words is being apprehended ; whereas very probably each
of the pivot words upon which our message turns
conveys a wholly defective or, at least, inadequate idea,
and the truth that would mean eternal life is not even
within grasp. Praise God for the illuminating power
of His Spirit, without whom our words were as idle
tales. But if we would be accurate in thought we must
abandon the idea, so hard to abandon, that instantaneous
spiritual receptivity is something often seen. It is seen
sometimes, and the day that shows it is marked by a
crown in memory, and an Overweight of Joy. Such days
TURNED OUT 13
are rare. Most days are commonplace, uncrowned by
any such discovery. But every sunrise shines with hope.
We may find that soul to-day.
For nearly an hour we sat by that woman, gradually
drawing nearer fco her in the contact that comes with
sympathy. And her dark eyes looked deep into ours,
and stirred our hearts with strong desire that she should
understand. Before we could be sure she did, the kindly
covering was removed. Some men saw us, and hurried
us out of the Fort.
And after we had gone away that woman's face came
back to us with its dark, deep-gazing eyes. I felt as if I
had seen it before, though I knew it could not have been so,
for no Fort woman walks outside. But often, during the
years that passed before we could enter the Fort again, I
seemed to see that same face pass, and to hear a tone
in another voice so like hers that it startled me, and
haunted me like a haunting tune. But life is full of the
definite. And the strange intangible influences that,
shadow- like, cross and recross it at times fall for the most
part unheeded.
CHAPTER III
He maketh the Stars
year of our first attempt upon the Fort was a
J_ year of organised opposition from the Hindus in
our neighbourhood. They had been exceedingly
friendly ; but they had been alarmed by seeing several
of their young people beginning to take an interest in
Christianity, and while they were debating about what
to do, one of these inquirers became a convert.
This clinched matters. The order went forth that
every caste town and village within a working distance of
our home was to be closed to us. Then all the district
round became like a rock at low tide studded with
limpet shells. Limpetwise, each little coterie resented
the lightest touch on its shell, and showed its feelings
by fastening the firmer to the rock. Those were the days
when our appearance in the most offended villages
brought handfuls of dust thrown from behind walls full
in our faces. We did not mind the dust, but we did
mind being shut out of the people's hearts. And yet we
could not wonder at them. From their point of view it
was the only thing to do.
Mr. Meredith Townsend's book, Asia and Europe, con-
tains a careful study of Indian character. Attention is
14
THE CASTE CABAL 15
drawn to the singular tenacity of will which, coexistent
as it is with a surface flexibility, so often perplexes the
observer. " The will of an Asiatic, once fairly roused,
closes on its purpose with a grip to which nothing in the
mind of a European can compare, a grip which seems
too strong for the conscience, the judgment, and even
the heart. The man is like one possessed, and cannot,
even if he would, change his self-appointed course."
Shortly after the stir caused by a break in the serried
ranks of caste, a young Brahman barrister whose interest
in books had brought us into touch with him, remonstrated
on our iniquity in receiving converts whose caste had for-
bidden them to have dealings with us. No one feels the
misery of this necessity more keenly than the Missionary,
and, longing that its cause should cease, we besought him
to use his influence towards winning liberty of conscience
for his people. " Why should they not be Christians at
home ? " we urged, fired with a sudden hope that this
well-educated man who quoted the English poets in
every second sentence, this platform orator, newspaper
writer, social reformer, would come to the rescue, and in
his home at least do something persuasive and brave.
He looked at us fixedly for a moment, and something
looked out from his eyes, and then with a concentration
of scorn we shall never forget, he spoke the truth to us,
" Liberty of conscience ? Christians at home ? There
is absolutely nothing we would not do to prevent such a
thing occurring." The will had closed there.
It was impossible to do much among the villages
where the caste cabal had power. There were others
open to us, so we went to them. All we wanted was
16 HE MAKETH THE STARS
"The glory of going on," a commonplace glory truly,
when going on means ploughing through deep sand in
hot weather to reach dull little villages, where interest-
ing things do not happen very often ; but a glory all
by itself because of the joy wrapped up in its heart.
Then this was stopped. Fever came. The dull villages
did not respond. News reached us of the declension of
some for whom we had hoped great things. Everything
seemed going wrong. It was during this time, which
was night to us, that God lighted a star in our sky.
We knew nothing about it at first. We had left our
headquarters and were itinerating outside the prescribed
area, when we camped near a town whose citizens chiefly
belong to a Clan notoriously turbulent and careless as to
spiritual things. There is no large temple there. The
people are immersed in the mundane. One evening we
had a large open-air meeting. Looking back we see
that day crowned.
For two heard then who believed. One was a lad of
eighteen who had learnt in a mission school. At that
meeting God met him and reversed his life-purpose.
The other, and the first to come out as a Christian, was
just a little girl. Star, we called her afterwards.
Sometimes when we are tired we spend an hour with
the poets. Thought-music, word-music holds a charm
like the music of moving waters, to soothe and heal.
Sometimes rest comes otherwise. The mystery of
mighty spaces, the splendour of great forces, or the
magic of colour, the marvel of the loveliness about us
seems to open suddenly as if another finer sense than
sight perceived it, and one's very being thrills with
WHO MADE ME? 17
an incommunicable joy. Sometimes a different thing
happens. One can hardly tell what. Only one knows
that, through and through, one is strong and glad and
well again. One has seen part of the Ways of God.
It was late evening, a year after that open-air meeting
in the Clansmen's town. We were in camp. Our tents
were pitched on a large expanse of white sea sand ; far
inland, but refreshingly suggestive of the sea. The day
had been hot, and all day long people had been coming
from the village near, not to listen, but to stare and
talk. Our crowded little tents had been stifling. The
noisy day, in which little of moment had been done, had
left us tired. " Come," I said to Star, who was with us,
" let us go out and cool." So we wandered hand in
hand over the sand. Only the shadow of some stunted
palms crossed its whiteness. Only the rustle of their
leaves, as the light night-wind blew over the plain, broke
its silence. We lay down on it and looked at the long
ribs and ripples where the wind had played with it, and
we let the moon-waves lap about us, and were still.
" Amma," whispered Star at last, so gently that it might
have been the night-wind speaking softly, " this re-
minds me of the first night I spoke with God." We
had often wondered how it was that a child who had
heard nothing before should so quickly understand and
respond. " Tell me about it," I said ; and she t jld me.
She had often asked her father to tell her who made
her. She would look at her hands and feet, and
realising that they must have been created by someone,
she would go to her wise old father and weary him with
questions about this unknown Creator. Was it the
18 HE MAKETH THE STARS
heavenly Siva, whose ashes they all rubbed across their
foreheads every morning after bathing ? There were so
many gods, she grew puzzled as she counted. Of all
the gods, who was greatest ? Was it Siva ? Could he
change dispositions ? She felt if she could only find
this out she would be satisfied, for the god who could
change dispositions must be the greatest, and surely the
greatest must be Creator. Her father did not seem to
know, and tried to put her off. This disheartened her.
But she would not give in. There was one way, she
reflected, by which she could bring creatorship and
sovereignty down to the test of practical life. She
would discover the hidden being by a process of elimina-
tion. She would go through all the gods she knew, and
find out which of them could change dispositions. She
decided to begin with Siva, whose name her Clansmen
bore. Had not her father gone to his temple month
by month, with fasting and with prayer, pleading for
children to be born to him ? And had not the heavenly
Siva granted him eleven ? Her heart went out to Siva
with a trustful expectation. He would change her
disposition.
For she had a trying temper. Often when she was
playing with other children she would get so over-
bearing that they would not play with her. She had
tried to conquer the fault, but there it was, strong, and
growing stronger in her. So she prayed to Siva, pros-
trating herself before him, crying her passionate broken
prayer over and over into the air that never answered
her back again. " 0 heavenly Siva, hear me ! Change
my disposition that other children may love me and
WHO CAN CHANGE DISPOSITIONS ? 19
wish to play with me ! 0 heavenly Siva, hear me !
hear me ! hear me ! "
" And was your disposition changed ? " " Oh no, no,
no. Not even was it moved towards changing. Then I
used to go away alone where nobody would see me, far
out into the jungle, and lay my head down on the
ground, and stretch my arms out, and wonder if no one
would come. And I tried some other gods, but I got
tired of it. And I wondered the more who made me,
and why I was made. And I wondered who I was.
I said, I am I ; I am I. But how is it that I am I ?
Then I got tired of wondering. And I got tired of
wanting to be good, for I could not change my disposi-
tion, and I did not know who could."
She went on, however, questioning any who would
listen. The cousin who could have answered her ques-
tions never spoke to her, nor did she speak to him. It
would not have been proper, each being who they were.
So no one answered her questions. People thought them
foolish, almost blasphemous, considered her peculiar,
because she was unlike themselves. An uncomfortable
child they thought her, as we gathered from what others
told us ; a sort of feminine freak, not to be taken seri-
ously. And they looked at her in a curious way, and
talked about her among themselves, and pitied her
mother. " Being observed, when observation is not
sympathy, is just being tortured." The sensitive flower
of our South Indian river banks folds up its petals and
leaves at less than a touch. The shiver of a shadow is
enough to rob it of the heart to look up. Poor little
human sensitive flowers, growing only God knows where,
20 HE MAKETH THE STARS
how often it must happen that they are chilled and hurt
just when their petals open and smile up to the sky !
The child repulsed made up her mind that she never
would ask any questions again. But she thought the
more. In this way she was being prepared to listen
when the answer came, and to understand.
CHAPTER IV
"Lol these are Parts of His Ways"
IT came unexpectedly. One evening she went for
water as usual to the well from which her people
drew, on the outskirts of the town. The little
terra-cotta coloured vessel was under her arm. She had
only one thought, to fill it and bring it home quickly,
and run back for another. Then she might go and play.
But she saw a crowd gathered near the well, and being
only a little girl she forgot about her work, and stood on
the wet stones by the well and looked and listened.
" There were three white people, and a talking noise, and
a singing noise, and a box which made a noise." This
was the first impression produced by ourselves and our
baby organ, and the ardent singing of the half-dozen
Indian helpers. It was all just a noise.
Presently she moved away. Then a madman came
and tried to disturb the meeting. " See the white man
beat the madman ! " shouted the crowd with enthusiasm.
This would be interesting. The child stopped and
watched. But the white man only put his arm on the
madman's shoulder, and drew him gently out of the
crowd, while the Indian brother continued speaking.
This was a tame proceeding. She turned again to go.
21
22 "Lo! THESE ARE PARTS OF HlS WAYS"
Just then a sentence repeated several times by the
preacher caught her attention : " There is a living God.
There is a living God : He turned me, a lion, into a
lamb."
Then, with the suddenness of a new discovery, it
flashed upon her that here at last was the answer to her
questions. The God who could change a lion-man into a
lamb was the God who could change dispositions, so the
greatest God, so Creator. His being described as living
implied that the rest were dead. " I will not worship a
dead god," she almost spoke aloud in her eagerness.
" Siva is a dead god. I will not rub his ashes on my
forehead." Then she went slowly home, pondering those
luminous words, " There is a living God : there is a living
God." And in telling about it she added simply, " I did
not want to sleep that night. I wanted to lie awake all
night and talk to the living God."
Next morning, like the swift surprise of sunrise, a
feeling of new happiness rose in her, and surrounded her,
so that all the world looked different, and she danced as
she walked. Being only such a little girl, she was free to
go where she would, only not to defiling places, such as
a Christian camp. She found her way to it notwith-
standing, and sat on the floor of our tent among other
village children, and learned a chorus, which struck her
as remarkable because it was so easily understood. (The
poetry to which she was accustomed was difficult to
understand). But this was all so very new that she
understood little of what she heard. " My heart was
like a little room. It could not hold much then. Only
I understood you said that the true God heard us when
THE TEST 23
we prayed, and very dearly loved us all. This entering
in made room for itself." We knew nothing of the
earnest little listener; did not even notice her among
the others, for she kept in the background shyly, and
ran home without speaking to us.
And as she ran home she resolved she would test
this living God. She would ask Him for three things.
If He should answer twice out of three times by doing
just as she asked, she would be sure He really heard,
and really dearly loved.
When she got home, her mother was standing on the
doorstep with a switch in her hand. This meant a
whipping. Quick as thought she prayed, " Living God,
0 Living God ! do not let my mother whip me ! "
Her mother caught her by the arm. " Where have
you been, you naughty child ? Oh, you evil one, come
here ! You are a perverse monkey cub ! You have
been to those low-caste people ! " And a stinging swish
of the switch on her little bare arms and shoulders was
all the answer she saw to her prayer.
But she kept quiet. "A sort of peace was in my
heart. I remembered you had said perhaps we would
be punished for listening, but that God would be with
us and help us to bear it ; so I kept quite still. It was
peace." But the mother, mistaking the peace for sullen-
ness, and being provoked by the child's unwonted silence,
exclaimed, " Those low-caste people have perverted you
already ! You have no feeling. You shall have a double
whipping ! " and administered it forthwith. Then, indeed,
distressed and much bewildered at this first and most
evident failure of the test, upon which somehow she felt
24 "Lo! THESE ARE PARTS OF HlS WAYS "
she had staked more than she quite understood, the poor
child broke out into bitter sobs, and the mother relented
and was kind. But she cried herself to sleep that night.
Next day saw her at the camp again, risking another
whipping, she knew ; but she did not mind that. Nor
did her conscience prick her for disobedience ; she
regarded the whipping as quite scoring off her debt of
duty to her mother. " I disobey : she whips me : we
are quits."
This time she heard a chorus about Jesus' love,
salvation, and power to keep, explained ; and gathering
that Jesus was the Living God, she prayed to Him as
she ran home that evening, " 0 Jesus ! Living God, out
of three prayers answer two ! ",
Her way led through a road bordered by tamarind
trees. The ripe fruit hung low. But it is stealing to
gather fruit ; you may only eat it if it falls of itself.
She stopped, she prayed, " 0 Jesus ! Living God ! make
the fruit fall." And a pod fell at her feet.
" One out of two ; that leaves one to show for certain
whether He really is hearing and loving," she thought as
she ran along, quickly now, for it was dark, and punish-
ment most probable. " Jesus ! Living God ! " she prayed,
as she raced almost breathless up to the door, " don't let
my mother whip me ! Jesus ! Living God, listen ! "
" Ob, my heart thumped hard as I saw my mother
standing on the step. She had not the switch in her
hand. She met me. She drew me in. She said, ' I
thought you were lost in the dark, my child ! Come in
and have your supper.' She did not whip me at all."
This settled the question for ever. The Living God,
THE QUESTION SETTLED 25
Jesus, did hear prayer, did answer, did love. She would
never doubt Him again, she told Him. She would
worship no other, pray to no other.
It was a long story, but it did not seem long. The
moon rode high overhead as we went back to camp.
The night was alight with the beauty of it and the
peace.
This was the child whose coming had been as star-
rise to us a year ago. I looked back through the year
that night. All along we had felt that she was not
an ordinary child. There was always something intense
about her. There was something unusual too in the
way she had laid hold of each new truth as it was
shown. She seemed to possess it at once. But enough
of the inner story : God has put our soul somewhere out
of sight, and our first conscious instinct is to pull the
curtain closer round it, and cover it up from people's
eyes. So the tale of the weeks that followed her first
coming to us shall remain untold. We who taught her
learned much ourselves. Our work was just to stand
out of the light and let it shine full upon her. After
a few weeks' teaching, suddenly she was snatched away.
CHAPTER V
"Yet"
in early childhood's days she had been an
ardent little idolater. When others stood in
worship, she knelt. When others knelt, she fell
on her face. " So far did I worship rny god," she said
sorrowfully in telling us of it. Her father and mother
called it " the god." She always called it " my god."
It was she who persuaded her father to spend large
sums of money upon works of merit to the honour of
their god. It was she who twisted the chickens' necks
when the annual sacrifice was offered. She loved to see
the goat's blood flow, because it belonged to her god.
And now her parents had sent for her to take part in
a family festival. She might return, they said, in four
days, but she must come at once.
She had been staying near our home, with a relative,
who had allowed her to spend most of her time with us.
Her parents, who during the interval had become known
to us, had not objected to our teaching her; they
thought of her as a mere child. But stories of what
she was saying and doing had floated out to them, and
alarmed them. She must be recalled. The festival
was made the pretext. The real intention, we felt,
26
ONLY FOUR DAYS? 27
was to get her out of our influence, and we feared a
marriage would be arranged, and completed as quickly
as possible.
But she had no such feelings and fears. " Only four
days and I will be back ! " And she danced about in
delight. For she was still a happy child, with the
careless confidence of a child, and all a child's love of
excitement. Apart from the religious element, with
which she was sure she would have nothing to do,
the festival would be enchanting; new clothes, and
new jewels, and such lovely decorations, and delicious
things to eat. " I will not be forced to do anything
wrong. I will say I am Jesus' child. I will tell them
all about Him. It will be all right," she said as she
opened the little Gospel of St. Mark which she had just
begun to spell out slowly, and we settled down for
our last talk. This was difficult to me. It is always
difficult to say anything which might suggest disloyal
thoughts to a child. But parenthood is so often lost
in Hinduhood here, that one felt bound to prepare this
little one, so fearless in her innocence, for what might
lie before her. So we talked about the difference
between the yieldedness of spirit where her own wishes
were concerned, which would please her Lord and
perhaps win her parents, and the weakness of will
where His wishes were concerned, which would be
fatal compromise. And then with her clinging hands
in mine I committed her to His tenderness. But my
heart sank as I saw her go.
The weeks that followed passed slowly. We heard
nothing of our child. We knew she would have sent
28 "YET"
a message had she not been prevented. We knew of
one who, for a less fault than hers, had been kept in
chains for three full years. "We knew that if chains
were in question now, any move on our part would
only rivet them the more firmly. We could do nothing
for her but pray and pray again.
Then came the most sorrowful day. News reached us
at last. She had given in, we heard. A family council
had been called. They had mocked the little lonely
girl. She had been ordered to worship the idol she used
to serve, and rub Siva's ashes on her forehead. She had
refused. Punishment followed. She could not bear it.
She yielded at last, bowed to the idol, rubbed on the
ashes. She would soon be married and sent far away.
As our bullock cart rumbled back home over the broken
road from the town where we had heard it, there was time
to feel it all. Everything seemed to feel it too. The lake
we skirted blazed in a still white fire of pain. The palms
by the roadside drooped with it. The cart wheels ground
it out of the sand. Life at such times is tense.
But there was one verse which came to us then, over
and over again. We were, you remember, shut out from
the homes of the people, because the coming of converts
had closed their hearts against us. There was no sign of
hope or joy anywhere just then ; no sheaf to lay at His
feet : " Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither
shall fruit be in the vines ; the labour of the olive shall
fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the flocks shall be
cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the
stalls : Yet will I rejoice in the Lord ; I will joy in the
God of my salvation."
THE " IMPOSSIBLE " 29
There was another Yet.
"No darkness is so deep but white
Wings of the angels through can pierce
Nor any chain such heaps lies in
But God's Own hand can hold it light;
Nor is there any flame so fierce
But Christ Himself can stand therein."
We were to prove it true.
Every one assured us that it was perfectly impossible
to do anything for the child. It was impossible she
could be saved from what to her would be a daily death.
The most we could ask for her was a quick release, and
faith to the end. For nothing we heard could make us
feel that her denial of her Lord was more than something
wrested from her by deadly fear. So we prayed on
these lines for a while. Then, in spite of all that was
said, all the verses we had ever read about God's doing
impossible things came crowding into our mind. We
could not give up hope. Together we waited upon Him
to do the impossible for her.
It was Sunday, a week later. We had heard nothing
in the interval. I was alone in my room, reading before
the first bell rang for morning service. Many verses
had a voice, and that voice hers. " I am so fast in
prison that I cannot get out." " Comfort the soul of
Thy servant : for unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my
soul. In the time of my trouble I will call upon Thee,
for Thou nearest me. Among the gods there is none
like unto Thee, 0 Lord : there is not one that can do
as Thou doest." She had said so, all bore witness to it.
If only she had not given in ! But He would not forget
30 "YET"
she had said it, and suffered for saying it. " Teach me
Thy way, 0 Lord, and I will walk in Thy truth. Oh, knit
my heart unto Thee ! " And then one's own heart found
voice in the cry, hardly could it be called a prayer, for
faith was tired that day, " Show some token upon me
for good ! " Oh, what a token for good it would be if
our Star-child might come back to us !
Some quiet minutes passed. The bell began to ring,
and I was just about to get ready for church, when
there was a little sound at the door, a little hand pushed
the sun-blind back — and we had our child again.
We never knew quite what had happened, for she was
very ill for weeks ; the overstrain had told. But some
things became clear. There had been a family council,
but she had not given in. God's hand had lighted that
little star. No storm could blow it out. All we had
heard had been done, and more. She was so much
gentler and more obedient than ever she had been before,
that her parents had been encouraged to think she would
not hold out long. But the strong old father found in
the weakness of his child a strength made perfect. His
allowing her to return to us is, to all who know South
India, very wonderful " There is not one who can do
as Thou doest."
I asked her what helped her most through those
weeks. She knew so little of the Bible then, that I
wondered what she would say. She told me she kept
the Gospel of St. Mark tied up in her dress as long as
she could. It was discovered, and taken from her.
" So I had not the comforting feel of it," she said. " But
I remembered they could not take away Jesus, and I
"THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE" 31
remembered how He walked in the fire with Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego ; and how the fire could not
burn their bodies or anything upon them, except the
cords. And I thought it was a good thing it burnt the
cords, for they could not have walked in the fire with
Jesus if the cords had not been burnt. So I asked Him
to let the fire burn my cords. After that I don't
remember anything. Only I think the fire got cool."
There are some ancient stories which are wonderfully
vivified by present-day experience. " Let them know
that Thou art Lord, the only God, and glorious over the
whole world." So the Song of the Three Holy Children
tells us they prayed. And " The angel of the Lord
came down, and smote the flame of the fire out of the
oven ; and made the midst of the furnace as it had
been a moist whistling wind so that the fire touched
them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them." And
even more brightly lighted up, the old words stand out
alive and strong : " Did we not cast three men bound
into the midst of the fire ? Lo, I see four men loose,
walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt."
We keep the date of the coming to us of each girl
and child as a birthday. There are feasts and flowers
and little surprises, as on a birthday at home. And the
fifth anniversary especially is held as a gala day. The
Star-child, who is now Accal (older sister) to a number
of affectionate little ones, gives us a look into the loving
ways of the East, through a letter written to a friend
telling about her fifth coming day. " I never had a day
like it. It was a day with a garland upon it. My
little sisters said to me the evening before, ' Call us
32 "YET"
early in the morning, because we want to see you early,
for to-morrow is a kind of little Christmas day.' And
in the morning they kissed me much, and they all came
round me and said, ' Dear Acc& ! this is our joyful day,
because it is your Coming-day.' Then we went to the
lake to bathe. And as we went through the wood the
church bell rang for the schoolboys' morning service.
Then they all kissed me again and said, ' Are you very
tired, Acca, after your long, long walk ? ' for it was to
them as if I had walked that morning all the way from
my father's house. And as we went they wanted to tell
some one about it. But we met no one in the wood.
So they called to the sky, ' 0 sky, hear us ! This is our
Accal's Coming-day ! ' And they called to the palms,
' 0 palms, hear us ! This is our Accal's Coming-day ! ' '
Five years bound round with deliverances and answers
to prayer : many a time the father had come to claim
her and enforce his right to make her do as he willed.
Each time, as if compelled to let go, he went away
without her. We could have done nothing to keep her
had he insisted. When he came, one of us always went
away alone and continued waiting upon God till the
conflict had found its conclusion in peace. Once as he
went away he was heard to mutter, " What is the matter
with me ? My hands are strong to take her ! It is as
if I were bound and held from touching her."
Enough : we have told enough to sweeten some song
in the night. If the angels care enough to sing over
each saved one everywhere, well may we sing when even
one star is lighted and kept alight. But our sky was
not left long with only one little star in it. One by one,
"PRAISE HIM, ALL YE STARS OF LIGHT!" 33
just as the stars come out in the evening, dropping
through the deepening blue, how, you hardly know, so
these stars came ; each the herald of another.
" Cursed be your feet that made the first track in the
sand for these others to follow," said the father, head of
the Clan, incensed as he saw brothers and cousins and
other young kinsmen turning the way she had gone. But
the angels look at it differently.
CHAPTER VI
Opened
STAR, grown-up now, was with me when, six years
after our last attempt, God opened the Fort to us.
She and I had been travelling together on the
Eastern side of the district. Some of her relatives lived
in the town to which the Fort belongs, and we had left
our direct route home to visit them. But dearly though
she loved them, Star found they and she had little in
common. The sorrow of this discovery was upon her
when we remembered the Fort ; and it was with a
quickened appreciation of the miracle of conversion
where such souls are concerned, that we approached
that little citadel, and once more sought an entrance in
the name of the Lord.
We found the same door locked and the same door
open, as before. Time seemed to have gone to sleep
where the old Fort was concerned. All within appeared
empty and silent, just as it had been before. We walked
through the streets unchallenged.
On the far side we found a grey old temple enclosed
by a high red and white wall. A tamarind tree is beside
it, and glad to get out of the brilliant light, light beating
down from unclouded blue, and light beating up from
34
IN THE FORT AGAIN 35
the glittering sand, we stood in the cool green shade
and prayed that some one might come to whom we
could speak.
Soon from the distance voices came jangling irreve-
rently through the universal silence. Then some field
women strolled across the open and accosted us in the
friendliest way, shouting all together in their astonish-
ment at seeing us. They were the Fort people's ser-
vants, they said ; they worked in the Fort fields outside,
and did the rough work of the place. They applauded
our wisdom in not knocking at any of the house doors.
" It would have greatly disturbed the women. Why
should you trouble them ? " They advised us to go out
again, because no one would let us in. " The evangelisa-
tion of the world in this generation " is our motto ; but
how are you to evangelise people when you cannot get
at them ? The women had work to do, and they left us
under the tree.
We had not knocked at any door, partly lest we
should startle the shy inhabitants, and partly because we
were so anxious to be led to the heart prepared. More
and more we feel that in work of this kind we need to
be led to the one who, through some previous dealing of
the Spirit, is ready to discern the truth. So once more
we walked past the silent shut-up houses, looking for an
open door.
We found one at last. Our call was answered by a
girl's voice. We went in and found a young girl in
possession. Her face struck me at once as familiar,
though I could not have seen it before.
She was a young wife, tall and slight, with hair that
36 OPENED
waved and curled round the smooth low brow. Her
eyes shone when she spoke to us or smiled, but when she
was only listening the light in them passed, and her
normal expression seemed one of depression, sharpened
by the keenness of some disappointment. She sighed as
she sat down, after spreading a mat for us. And she
sighed as she listened.
" Sister ! " Star began in her simple earnest way, " we
have come to bring good news to you. There is a living
God who loves you. He has always loved you. He sent
us here to tell you so." " Who loves me ? " interrupted
the girl. " I have no children."
We knew enough of the customs of the Fort to under-
stand. The childless wife might any day become the
childless widow. To such a one a terribly severe punish-
ment is meted out. We had heard the smothered cry
of one as we passed the house where she was confined in
what a child, in describing it, called the " eighth (very
innermost) room of the house."
It is not true, thank God, that confinement to an Indian
girl is what it would be to an English girl. The free,
open-air loving spirit is rarer here than at home. But
no words can overstate the bitterness poured into many
a cup. And the song — if such tear-words can make a
song — that the Fort-widow sings is this : " Where it
will may the river wander ; where she will the wife may
wander. Pent by its banks is the pool. Pent by her
fate is the widow. I, the widow, am as the pool, as the
pool that never may wander."
Only a thread withheld this from that girl. Should
fate cut that thread, her husband's life, what an Indian
IN A FORT HOUSE 37
widow has quietly called "The cold fire" would be
kindled for her. And all life was a fear to her because
she had no children at seventeen.
For a moment the two girls looked at each other.
One saw how very alike they were. They might have
been sisters. But a world of difference lay between ;
one saw it and ached to see it as the Star-child leaning
forward held out her hands beseechingly, " Take it !
His love is all for you. Oh, sister, this news was
beautiful to me and the joy of joys" — while the other,
leaning back lest defiling hands should touch her,
answered the eager words with a yawn. " Is that so ? "
she said at last, and rose ; " I must go and do my
cooking."
Had she the heart prepared ? It did not seem like it.
And yet one never knows. The seed strikes root some-
times in a narrow crevice in the rock.
We found another open door, and went in full of
expectation. A mother was there, and a family of
children ; bonnie babies played on the floor, and the
elder ones clustered about us close, but never close
enough to touch, for that would be pollution.
It was the usual South Indian room, dark save for
the shaft of light which fell from the open door. It
was furnished with a great brass lamp, hung with
oleander flowers ; and there was one unusual thing, a bed
of dark wood finely carved, of a quaint involved design.
A pile of silk garments lay on it, crimson and a golden
brown, and the shaft of sunlight fell on the pile, and
lighted the room with colour. There was colour too in
the group on the floor, where half in sight and half iu
38 OPENED
shadow, making unconscious pictures, the mother and
children sat looking at us with that calm scrutiny which
in India precedes speech, be the speech when it comes
never so trivial. " Why have you got no jewels and no
oil on your hair ? " they asked at length, and launched
into conversation.
One by one the women from the inner rooms came
out. There was not a sound or a movement as we tried
to show our Lord to them. Almost breathless in her
eagerness, knowing she might never see them again, Star
told them the wonderful story, and still there was silence
as I continued, feeling afresh as one told it freshly to
those who had never heard it, the infinite marvel of it.
Oh for words to tell it as it deserves to be told ! Could
any heart resist it ? How we longed to stay with these
women, become Fort women to them, and tell them all
about the love of Jesus over and over, till we could be
sure they understood ! But that could not be. Caste
comes at once and makes a distance between us and
those to whom we would fain be as sisters. We stayed
as long as they cared we should, then left them regret-
fully. A man saw us as we left the house, but he took
no notice of us ; so far as getting in was concerned, the
Fort was open at last, and we went where we would
through the quiet streets and searched for our first
friend, the one who had listened six years before ; but
we could not find her. Death had not waited outside
those six years ; that was a sobering thought. And we
tried to find some trace of the seed sown years ago by
the sister we knew had once gone in ; but the seed had
not beeii watered, how could it have lived ? Perhaps
OPEN, BUT NOT OCCUPIED 39
the seed that sister sowed was the seed-corn of prayer.
Thank God that seed is imperishable. In the opening
of the Fort we saw that seed in fruit.
But now that it is open who is there to go in ? Our
Mission is considered well manned and well organised.
Everything is arranged in departments. There is a
Biblewoman department, with, its natural sequence, a
Converts' home. There is a Biblewoman in the town to
which the Fort is attached. But the place lies some
distance from her home ; she has plenty of nearer work,
she cannot undertake the Fort. There is no other
woman in the town who can. And only a woman has
the entree to the Fort. So that the most it can have
is an occasional visit. Not that it wants more, or as
much. It is not asking for anything. There is no
consciousness of need. Still, it is open so far, as we
have shown. The narrowness of centuries is widening
a little, the exclusiveness is a little less pronounced.
And yet, in this " well-manned " Mission, the workers
are still too few to allow of one being immediately
set apart to buy up an opportunity, buyable now for the
first time. The truth is that workers of the right sort
are far too few to buy up one out of every hundred
opportunities, here and everywhere.
CHAPTER VII
The Clan
T
well " : this was the picturesque description the
Superintendent of Police gave us when we asked
him about the Clan. The people of the Clan dwell in
two towns about six miles apart. They are as one man
in sentiment and character, and they do not love the
Christian religion.
The boy of eighteen, who, with his cousin Star, heard
the Gospel preached in the open-air meeting by the
well, kept silent at first as to his determination to be
a Christian. His father, one of the wealthiest men in
the place, would disinherit him he knew. He did not
fear that. What he did fear was the abandonment of
grief into which his action would plunge his family.
Also, being a human boy, he feared being beaten. A
beating in the Tamil country may mean anything, from a
good whipping with a switch or rope up to cudgelling,
from which even a grown man might shrink. So the boy
was silent for a while.
Just at that time his town and its twin town were
agitated over an event which had deeply affected a
neighbouring village. A young girl belonging to a
40
VICTORY TO SIVA ? 41
much respected caste had confessed Christ openly, and
been obliged to leave her home and take refuge else-
where. Immediately following this, another girl, belong-
ing to the twin town, took her stand as a Christian, by
refusing to carry a pot, pierced with a thousand holes,
which holes in Tamil are called eyes, as an offering to
the goddess who had, as was believed, restored her eye-
sight. " It was the Christians' God Who healed my
eyes. I will not carry the pot."
It is true that a girl is a thing of small consequence
in the life of a Hindu town. It is also true that nothing
creates more disturbance in that same life than any
independent action on the part of a girl. The Clan,
as head caste in the place, concerned itself in the case.
The parents were encouraged to use extreme measures.
The Clan promised to back them up in whatever they
chose to do. One night, armed with a billhook and a
knife, mother and father made a feint -of attacking the
girl, but she was not terrified though they almost beat
her to death. All this was known to the Clan. "Go on !
We shall see who will conquer," they said, " Siva or
Christ." The parents went on. They won their way
at last.
Then the Hindus were triumphant. All the town
seemed to know about it. When we went there we felt
the triumph in the very air. " Siva has conquered !
Victory to Siva ! " Some openly said it ; everyone
looked it. In a little dark room in the heart of the
town we tasted the bitterness of it, slowly drank of it,
hour after hour. And yet somehow, though far cast
down, at first we were not afraid. We thought God
42 THE CLAN
would work a miracle. He sometimes does. To us this
seemed a suitable time : " Wherefore should the heathen
say, where is now their God ? Let Him be known
among the heathen in our sight. 0 God, how long
shall the adversary reproach ? Shall the enemy blas-
pheme Thy name for ever ? Why withdrawest Thou
Thy hand, even Thy right hand ? Pluck it out of Thy
bosom ! Arise, 0 God, plead Thine own cause." But
we saw no sign in that dark little room, and as we drove
away we looked back upon it with a sort of shuddering
horror. We had seen there, with the smirch of his
finger fresh upon it, the handiwork of the evil one. We
had corne into direct collision with him, and for the time
had been terribly worsted. We reached home tired out,
to find a convert waiting there.
Workers in hard places will know what that brief
sentence means : the sudden swing from depth to height,
the sudden revulsion of feeling, the inrush of exultant
joy, shadowed though it was, and had to be — they will
understand it. The boy who had given himself to a
new service at that open-air meeting could not go on
keeping silence. He confessed Christ at home. But he
could not live as a Christian at home. He was forced to
escape to us. He had arrived a few minutes before we
came.
Immediately the storm broke round the mission-house.
Crowds of relatives came, raged, pleaded, in turn. Some-
times they brought one skilled in speech to work upon
him, till one felt, as one listened, influenced against
one's will, by the almost hypnotic effect of that wonder-
fully persuasive oratory, and marvelled at the strength
VICTORY TO CHRIST ! 43
that held him constant. Sometimes they painted the
mother's sufferings so harrowingly that we to whom she
was not mother could hardly bear it. But he bore it,
though only God knows what it cost. The men of the
Clan, who by supporting the parents in their iniquity
concerning the young girl, were chiefly responsible for its
result, came in wrath and humiliation, and we could not
help wondering whether it ever occurred to them to
connect their action in that with God's action in this.
Gladly now would they have seen that insignificant
young girl a baptized Christian ten times over rather
than lose their noble boy.
For from their point of view he was irretrievably lost.
He broke caste from the first, and took his stand as an
out-and-out Christian, in a way which dismayed them,
and made them feel the Clan had been humbled to the
dust. " He has fallen into the pit, and we with him !
0 blind god, blind god ! " they cried, " is it thus you
requite your worshippers ? " We heard no more of
victory to Siva.
Suddenly this bright boy died. We were from home
at the time, and when we heard the news it seemed to
ring the knell to all our hopes for that special Clan and
town Nothing so daunts prospective inquirers as the
death of a new convert. "Join the Way, and die,"
they say, ignoring the fact that those who do not join
occasionally die. Death is the sign of God's frown.
Were the people going to be able to think it was victory
to Siva, after all ?
The Christians who lived in the little house, in whose
dark little room we waited that day in our weakness and
44 THE CLAN
grief, wrote to us : " He died here ; he died in the room
where you prayed. The heathen crowded the street, and
looked in, and we sang as he died, so that all should
hear, ' Victory to Jesus' name. Victory to Jesus.' He
had no fear. It was all victory, and peace. Many saw
it and wondered. ' We do not die so,' they said ; and
with great astonishment they watched us, and listened."
Then indeed it seemed to us that in each detail
and incident a Divine coincident lay. Had not God
purposely chosen the place of our defeat to be the place
where He should show forth His triumph over the last
enemy to be destroyed ? Had not even that very room
come into His remembrance ? The thought of it was
good now. It had become a porch into the Presence
chamber. The influence of that victorious death still
works in the town. It is an argument none can con-
trovert for the truth of our holy religion and the keeping
power of God.
This alone would have been much. There is more to
tell. We feared for the town, because we have often
noticed that if a town, knowing what it is doing, shuts
its doors and bars its windows to the breath of the
Spirit, there is a withdrawal. The Spirit does not force
an entrance. The town seems left. But to the glory of
God we tell it, that town has stood out as an exception.
From the day the people claimed victory for Siva, the
town has never been for long without a seeker after
truth. First from the most opposing Clan another was
won, and another. Then to the heart of things the Spirit
passed, and touched one connected with Temple-service.
Then back to the indignant Clan, and another was drawn
" THINE is THE KINGDOM" 45
out. The next came from a hamlet dependency. The
next from the Clan again. And looking widely over His
work it appears that He has most markedly worked in
that special Clan which, whether in village or in town,
is most strong in opposition.
" When Christianity assumes an aggressive attitude,"
wrote George Bo wen, " the first result is a great exhibi-
tion of Satanic power. Satan's power to be manifested
must be assaulted. There must necessarily be a com-
plete exhibition of Satan's power before there can be a
complete revelation of the power of Christ. This last is
the second result of Christian aggression. It is by what
He conquers that Christ's power is to be discovered."
It is true that the little town as a whole, and especially
its leading Clan, oppose as much as ever. There has
been no general movement. Souls are saved one by one.
May the day soon come when, by some great wave of
irresistible Omnipotence, those who of all the world's
peoples are hardest to win, will be swept into the kingdom
of God's dear Son ! Nothing less will effectually deal
with Islam and with caste ; our work is only the under-
mining of the walls of the ancient fortress of lies, that
when at last the wave breaks on the shore, there may
be the less to withstand it ; till then may God keep us
patient, " henceforth expecting." But even now as we
look through the years to that day, when we felt so
heavy-laden, to that room where we saw not our signs,
to that Clan of strong antipathies, to that town unshaken
in its certainty of victory to Siva, and then turn, and
look humbly but thankfully at what has happened since,
can we fail to see and appropriate God's Overweight of
46 THE CLAN
Joy ? " It is by what He conquers that Christ's power
is to be discovered."
"Now thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ!" Oh to be more and
more " stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the work
of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not
in vain in the Lord."
CHAPTER VIII
The Clue
OF all the people we had met in six or seven years'
continuous itinerating work, none had drawn us
more to pray, or followed us more persistently
through those fugitive half-resemblances which so often
suggested remembrance, than the secluded women of the
Fort. But the conversion of a Fort woman still seems
distant.
The genesis of anything is interesting. According to
the folklore of the place, the Fort's story is briefly this :
Over eight hundred years ago it is said that two sisters
and their retainers in journeying south quarrelled while
fording the river which flows by the town near which
the Fort is built. One sister held that convenience should
rule in crossing rivers ; and she marched straight through
the stream holding her garments so that they should not
get wet. The other insisted that custom should ever be
observed ; and she let her garments trail in the water.
The straw became a pillar, as the Tamils say ; the
two sisters and their adherents parted never to meet
again. The independent-minded sister travelled further
and founded a township. The other stopped near the
river, built a wall a mile in circumference, fifteen feet high
47
48 THE CLUE
and six feet thick, pierced with four doors iron bossed
and fitted with huge locks. Within this wall it was
then ordained the women folk of that Clan must dwell
in absolute seclusion. No woman born within should ever
go out alive. No man born without should ever come
in. Till they were eight or nine years old, the Fort's little
girls might play freely in the open enclosure within the
wall. After that age was passed they must live indoors.
Once, a child, attracted by the sound of a procession
passing through the street beyond the wall, ran out of
her house, up to the wall, where the door stood open
invitingly. And she looked out. Some one had seen
her and followed. She was pulled in, and the people
say she was instantly sawn asunder, and buried beside
the door. Since then that door has been locked.
Once that great man, the Governor of the Province,
rode up in state to the locked door and asked to be
admitted. He was refused, and rode off with his suite.
" If any of them," writes an I.C.S. friend, " gets into
trouble, all you can do is to knock at the door and say
he is wanted ; and his friends hand him out to you.
We have never known a case which would justify us
in violating their scruples to the extent of forcing an
entrance." The people to this day tell with relish the
story of the Governor who turned back from the locked
door. You can see their appreciation of the courtesy
which respected their tradition, but overtopping that is
pride in their glorious grooviness. " We are the People
of the Fort."
But the Fort's existence has been jeopardised by certain
of its laws. " Their treatment of the ladies is not, as
COFFINED 49
may be imagined, conducive to the longevity of that
sex," is the laconic observation of the Civil Servant
before quoted. One law enacted that no family might
possess more than one daughter. This law has been
repealed, but its long observance has denuded the Clan.
So these people have lived their lives for many
generations, unaffected by the changes in the world
outside their wall. India may pass from hand to
hand. What does that matter to the people of the
Fort ? Storms and calms are nothing to the fossil in
the rock. It may appear incredible to the strong
commonsense of the West that the will should close on
its purpose to bury its owner alive. In the East such
things are not strange. The corpse is content in its
coffin. That is the pity of it. But the coffin lid has
smothered any sigh that may ever have risen, the world
so close outside has never seen through that coffin lid,
where the thing that was not a corpse may have moved.
That is the tragedy of it.
After their altercation, the two branches of the Clan
naturally fell apart, and considered themselves foes.
No intermarriage was permitted. They were as two
separate castes. The sister's descendants who settled
outside increased and spread to a neighbouring town.
" And it is affirmed that the characteristic shown by the
sister at the ford, who dared to act as she chose apart
from the rules of etiquette, still lingers in the family,
for the women are brave and independent of spirit, and
their men are very bold " : so reads the Tamil manuscript
from which the story comes, and ends.
For a moment I saw nothing, and put the paper down ;
4
50 THE CLUE
then suddenly I understood, caught at the fleeting float-
ing clue that had eluded me so long, knew why that first
Fort woman's face had followed me through all the
years ; knew too how prayer had wrought when it
seemed as though it had fallen as the very foam of the
spray beaten back by the great sea-wall.
The family famed for audacity and defiance of public
opinion live eight thousand strong in the town where we
held that ever-remembered open-air meeting by the well.
Star and her cousin, the boy who bore glorious witness in
his death, belonged to that special Clan. The town
in which such battles were fought and in which the
Spirit has wrought in power, proving Christ and not
Siva reigns, is peopled by the same family, twin Clan to
the Clan of the Fort. 9
" True prayer," says Westcott in his note on Hebrews
v. 7, " the prayer which must be answered, is the per-
sonal recognition and acceptance of the Divine will. It
follows that the hearing of prayer ... is not so much
the granting of a specific petition which is assumed by
the petitioner to be the way to the end desired, but the
assurance that what is granted does most effectively lead
to the end."
Often the answer to our prayer comes as it were
obliquely. We pray for one, and the prayed-for one
goes on apparently unimpressed. But the prayer, if
one may put it so, glances off the soul that has hard-
ened itself, and falls like a shower on another, and that
soul responds like a watered garden, and blossoms out
in flower. Or where, as in the case of the Fort, and
perhaps more often than we know, ignorance rather than
LOOK UP 51
wilful refusal shuts off the fall of the showers for a
while, the answer may be delayed, and we may count
the time a void ; not seeing that what is granted does
most effectively lead to the end which is our heart's
desire. But if, not seeing any light, we listen in still-
ness, we hear God say : " Fear not, look up, for My love
works now, even before it is given full scope. See, I
am filling the interval with shining answers to those
prayers. Look and see them, star-like, strewn across
the places you thought were void. There are no empty
places here. Look up, and praise."
CHAPTER IX
The Shah Najaf
IF there is one thing more than another which
the average Englishman abhors, that thing is cant.
We all agree about it. It is detestable. The
man of the world, so called, keeps clear of it alto-
gether. Are we who professedly belong to another
world quite so clear ? For example, we sincerely re-
joice over stories of success from this and that quarter
of the globe. But does it very much trouble us
that Asia as a whole is practically an unconquered
fort?
If it does trouble us, how much does it trouble us ?
How much are we prepared to sacrifice to win that fort ?
Missionaries at home on furlough are sometimes keenly
disappointed in what is called an interest in missions.
In some places it seems as if this same " interest " were
treated as a sort of decorative afterthought to the other-
wise quite complete church life. An absence of news
(good news) from the front, and there is a perceptible
cooling off ; an honest story of defeat is told, and discour-
agement results. And yet we all profess to be soldiers,
with a soldier's conscience about obedience and a soldier's
courage in tackling the difficult. To the onlooker, at
62
"DISCOURAGING" 53
least, it must sometimes seem that we are not in very
burning earnest about our soldiership. And if we call
ourselves soldiers, and sing, and pray, and talk on these
lines, and yet are not in burning earnest, is it not possible
that the thing we all agree to dislike is resident among
us?
The fact is irrefutable, and the sooner we face it the
better, that certain fields are " discouraging," to quote the
poor broken-backed word in use in such connections.
Yet history is full of stories which rebuke the limp-souled
courage based on prospects of an easy victory. We
often recall these stories. One concerns the Shah Najaf
in the days of the Indian mutiny.
The Shah Najaf was a tomb enclosed by masonry
loopholed walls twenty-five feet high. Lord Eoberts de-
scribes its assault and capture in his Forty-one Years
in India. He says it was almost concealed in dense
jungle, so that its strength was unsuspected till ap-
proached. The troops were marching to the relief of
Lucknow. They could not leave the fort unconquered
in their rear. The artillery, a battalion of detachments,
fresh infantry, attacked in succession. They fo\l back,
riddled by the deadly fire from the fort. Our guns were
only a few yards distant, but they produced no impres-
sion. The enemy, encouraged by success, grew bolder.
The one hope of the little British army fighting against
30,000 desperate mutineers was to continue to advance
at all hazards. Sir Colin Campbell led his men straight
to the walls. The narrow path through the jungle was
choked with wounded officers and dead and struggling
horses. No breach in the walls could be found. The
54 THE SHAH NAJAF
men had no scaling ladders. Passion, tumult, solid
dogged steadfastness, lives wrecked upon a purpose hardly
to be achieved, the hot night closing down, the foe all
round, for all the North was a foe : see it, and you see
stress and strain past telling, cause for immense dis-
couragement.
We have our Shah Najaf. This ancient and highly
developed creed is a tomb. The word suggests decadence,
but a tomb may be strongly fortified, with a strength
concealed till approached. We make little headway in
our assault. The enemy is upon us. We cannot fight
at night. The enemy sees this, knows with an accurate
knowledge we do not possess what the odds against us
are. And so, except in moments of panic, he is not
afraid of us.
The critic of missions sees all this, and, marvelling at
our madness in prolonging the unequal struggle, he
tries to show us how very unequal it is. He laughs
at what he calls our " inflated reports," and calmly
sits down to calculate. So much expenditure all told,
with its present net result. So much money, so many
men, devoted to the winning of those who are confessedly
hardest to win, with exactly what success. The walls of
the Shah Najaf, he proves, are not even slightly cracked.
But why should his sums disturb us so ? It is true
that he omitted to tabulate results among peoples less
strongly entrenched. He knew that these results are
already familiar to students of missionary literature.
Heaven's statistics were out of his reach, and possibly he
may have forgotten the existence of the factor. Is his
product therefore entirely wrong ? Why should he for
"GREAT is THE TRUTH" 55
his candour's sake be considered unpleasant, almost
profane, a pricking brier and a grieving thorn in the
sensitive missionary body ? Perhaps there is some truth
in what he says. We do not want to be either
optimistic or pessimistic, but just true. Said the wise
Zerubbabel, " Great is the Truth and stronger than all
things," and proved his proposition. And all the people
shouted, " Great is the Truth and mighty above all
things." " Truth beareth away the victory." If there is
a possible particle of truth in the critic's remarks should
we not set to, and search it out, and honour it when we
find it ?
We should, and we will, say an increasing number of
mission-loving men and women at home, and missionaries
abroad ; but some still fear, knowing human nature well,
lest subscriptions should be lost and candidates deterred
by a too detailed account of what is called " the dark
side " of things. But surely God's silver and gold should
not have to be dragged out of Christian pockets by force
of tales of victory. It should be enough to know that
the King requires the money for the prosecution of His
wars. Our unselfish friends the collectors should not
have to dread lest an inconvenient escape of facts
make their hard work harder. And as for the mission-
ary candidates, if the knowledge that the battle is not
nearly won yet deters them in the least, let them be
deterred. The kind of candidate wanted ivill not be
deterred. What we need is more common honesty.
God listens to our words however expressed, strips them
bare of accessories, musical or devotional, peels off all the
emotion ; searches through for the pith at their heart,
56 THE SHAH NAJAF
caring just for the white thread of Truth. If we are, as
we declare we are, not our own but wholly Another's,
feeling will not affect duty either way.
The reports from the most hotly contested fields
contain serious facts. A South Indian missionary
lately wrote, that if our estimate of the progress made
during the past twenty years in a certain Indian city
were correct, we must admit that the Gospel we have
been teaching does not appear to have had very much
power in view of all that has been done. " We might
well ask ourselves whether we really are preaching the
Gospel of Jesus Christ as He means we should." The
weapons of our warfare are mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds. Why are they not oftener
pulled down ?
The soldiers before the Shah Najaf were repulsed
till further attack seemed suicide. Then the tide of
victory turned. Two men, searching along the wall,
discovered a single opening, looked through, climbed
through. They found the foe flying from the Shah
Najaf.
We have the promise of triumph. The fortress of
the high fort of those walls of creed and caste shall
God bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground,
even to the dust. We believe in God, Jehovah is His
Name : that strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong,
so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. We
have no right to be discouraged.
But, are we soldiers after all ? What those soldiers
could not tolerate, rushed on death rather than tolerate,
we tolerate comfortably; thankful that things are no
LOUISE BENEDICT PIERSON 57
worse than they are. Where is our enthusiasm for the
kingdom of our Lord ? If enthusiasm is love on fire,
where, then, is our love ? Do we count our lives too
dear unto us to risk them under loopholed walls ? Is
Christ's battalion the only one in which it is counted
too much to die ? We would not conceal it, it does
mean death. Eeputation for soul-winning power dies
under the walls of the Shah Najaf. All that the " I "
in us loves should live, is sentenced to death at the
Shah Najaf. " Except it fall into the ground and die "
— the law of the seed is the soldier's law. " There is
no gain except by loss, there is no life except by death.
. . . And that eternal Passion saith, ' Be emptied of
glory and right and name.' "
One more look : look at the two, solitary for the
moment, as they search along that wall. They have
found the gap, they are climbing through it into the
fort : are they solitary now ? No ! for the Highlanders
close behind, each man keen to be first to go through,
needing no urging. Then look again at the other wall,
at the few who are searching for the gap. Say, when
your comrades find the gap will they have to go in
alone ?
Do we press all to come and join in the storming of
the Shah Najaf ? For answer, we quote words written
in one of her last letters, by an Indian missionary,
Louise Benedict Pierson, who received the victor's palm
on the battlefield. It is a warrior's message to a brother,
a comrade to be :
" I write words for you to ponder and pray over. Do
not go to any foreign field until you know beyond a
58 THE SHAH NAJAF
doubt that God has Himself sent you to that particular
field at that particular time. There is a romance or
halo about being a missionary which disappears when
you get on the field, I assure you. And, believe me,
from the first moment you step upon shipboard upon
your way to the field, the devil and all his agents
will attack, and entice, and ensnare you, or try to do
all these, in order to defeat the purpose for which you
cut loose and launched out. Nothing but the fulness
of the Holy Spirit will carry anyone through ; and if
you do not know that you have received this, do not
fail to obey the command to ' tarry until you be endued
with power from on high.'
" Believe me, the foreign field is already full enough
of prophets that have run, and He did not send
them. If you know beyond a doubt — and you
may — that God is empowering and sending you
there, and now, go and fear not; and when, through
the days, months, and years of suffering, that are sure
to be in this cross-bearing life, the question arises again
and again, ' Why is this ? Am I in God's plan and
path ? ' the rock to which you will hold in this sea of
questionings and distresses is, ' God sent me here, I
know beyond a doubt; therefore I may go on fearing
nothing, for He is responsible, and He alone.' But if
you have to admit, ' I do not know whether He sent
me or not/ you will be thrown into an awful distress
of mind by the attacks of the great adversary, not know-
ing what will be the outcome, and you will find yourself
crying out, ' Oh that it were time to go home. What
a fool I was to run ahead of the Lord.' Do not think,
LOUISE BENEDICT PIERSON 59
my brother, that God sends us to the field sweetly to
tell the story of Jesus, and that is all. He sends us
there to do what Jesus came into the world to do — to
bear the cross. But we will be able to trudge on,
though bowed under the weight of that cross of suffering,
and even of shame, if our hearts are full of Him,
and our eyes are ever looking upon the One who is
invisible, the One who sent us forth, and therefore will
carry us through.
" Forgive me for writing thus plainly. I pray that
this message may shake in you all that can be shaken,
that that which cannot be shaken may remain firm as
the Eock of Ages."
CHAPTER X
"Follow the Gleam"
DR. HORTON, in his Life of Tennyson, explains the
Gleam to be that elusive truth or beauty which
it is the function of the poet to seize and ex-
press. The poet's life must ever be a following of the
Gleam.
To the missionary the Gleam is the joy set before
him, the glory of his Master in the winning of souls.
His whole life, if he is true, has for its motto, " Follow the
Gleam."
The rough battle view of things seen at the Shah
Najaf sometimes tires. There are days when we want
something less fierce. The noise of the shouting, the
clash of creed on creed ceases, " quenched with quiet "
at the passing of the Gleam.
The besetting sin of Evangelistic work is slackness.
Our colleagues on the Educational side have certain
incentives which we have not. The result is apparent.
If you want to see Duty spelt with a capital letter,
go to a well-worked mission school. Such a visit is a
tonic.
Another tonic is to be found in the other wing, the
Medical. There you can study the opposite of your own
60
NEYOOR 61
defect, for a medical mission is nothing if it is not
thorough. The punishment for slovenly work is sure
and swift in the Medical as in the Educational. Only
the thorough succeeds. In our Evangelistic work it is
somewhat different. The result of a slack hour does not
show at once. The stain it leaves on the conscience, the
absence of something that might have been wrought in
another soul, these are symptoms of decline often invis-
ible to our eyes. Only God and the sorrowful Angels
read them aright from the first.
As tilings are, then, it is good sometimes to break
away from one's own sphere and go into another for a
while. It helps to ensure against mental cramp. It
draws the lowered standard up, and gives one a salutary
shake. And because the Gleam is the same for Educa-
tional, Medical, and Evangelistic, one finds oneself
still in one's own world with much to learn in every
direction.
The nearest medical mission to us is the London
Missionary Society's hospital at Neyoor, South Travan-
core, distant thirty-five miles. If one has a change of
bulls, and spends much energy in hurrying them on, one
may cover the distance in about the time it takes to
reach Dublin from London. Our people from all over
the district constantly travel to the Neyoor hospital, for
in our C.M.S. Mission here we have no medical work,
and the people often feel the need of the help the
Neyoor hospital gives.
My introduction to Neyoor shows a side of medical
mission work upon which the mission Report naturally
does not dilate, it being only one of the little byways of
62 "FOLLOW THE GLEAM"
kindness familiar to Medicals everywhere, but it may be
worth while telling it. We had an epidemic of oph-
thalmia in the village. Every morning a succession of
suffering infants were brought to be attended to. Just
when they were all beginning to mend, the trouble came
to me. I thought nothing of it at first — it is a most
common thing in India (the children immediately gave
me the verse, " In all things it behoved Him to be made
like unto His brethren ") — but it soon forced one to think
of it. Simple means failed. Help was sought from Palani-
cottah, but the Government doctor was miles away and
could not come. We were reluctant to appeal to the
overworked medical missionaries, but at last Mr. Walker
telegraphed. Straight from the midst of what we after-
wards knew was an abnormally heavy pressure of work,
one of the two doctors stationed at Neyoor cycled
out to us. That same night, as the blessed ease of
respite from pain was felt, how I wished for a voice
that would reach far to speak a clear word for medical
missions !
The Neyoor hospital has thrown out offshoots into the
fortunate surrounding country. One of these is a truly
wonderful little place. It is a complete little hospital
run on Western lines by an Indian medical evan-
gelist. There you have the science of the West at work,
with the touch of the East upon it.
When you wander round the Neyoor hospital, you see
the East and West again in delightfully close company.
Each patient has a friend or friends, and each of these
seems to have friends. The result may not make for hos-
pital discipline, but from a missionary view-point nothing
FROM A LAY POINT OF VIEW 63
could be more satisfactory. The kitchen system is as
Indian as possible. The kitchens look like caves yawn-
ing on the face of a cliff, for they open off a blank wall
with a steep back-slanting roof ; each caste has its own
cave. Facing the wards and hospital buildings which
run round the compound, Indian fashion, there is what
looks like a neat little house, built of stone on a stone
platform, with a high-pitched red-tiled roof. This is the
operation room, the heart of the place.
To the lay mind, and most of us are only lay, the
sound of the word " operation " suggests something
sinister, and the operation table is a thing we prefer
to forget. I was looking, half attracted, half repelled,
at the various contrivances and instruments, when a
shuffling noise proclaimed an arrival, and an old man,
a cataract case, was helped up the steps, and into the
room, and on to the table. Then I realised that my
feelings were wholly those of aversion. The little knives
that were waiting in a bath of solution looked cruel.
They were waiting for that poor old man.
" Doctors revel in operations : I wonder if they
remember that their victims are not equallv inured.
I wonder if bodies are just cases without feelings " : —
these were the thoughts that came at that moment,
quite irrespective of reason. " He's nervous," said the
doctor, who was vigorously scrubbing his hands. " You
might talk to him : tell him it won't hurt." Some
questions are quickly answered.
The patient was a thin old man. He lay like a corpse,
with a quilt for a shroud, his blind eyes staring straight
up, his lips tense. He was a Hindu from our district,
64 "FOLLOW THE GLEAM"
I found. The home voice seemed to reassure him. He
lay more naturally.
There was prayer for a successful issue. The merciful
cocaine had done its work. The eye was ready. The
doctor began.
Being so very lay, we found our chief interest in
the human element rather than the surgical, and stood
a little aside watching the faces of the two or three
concerned. There was something fascinating in their
absorption, something inspiring too. And the sense of
the barbarous wholly passed as a figment of gross
ignorance. It was one man trying to help another,
bending all his skill upon him, and all in the way of
following the Gleam.
I had been through the wards, had talked with the
people in bed and on the floor, for the hospital had
overflowed its beds, and some had mats on the floor.
Then I had mingled in the crowd of impotent folk in
the outer hall, men and women of all castes and condi-
tions, and I had visited that surprisingly cheerful place,
the lepers' quarters. There had been a mixture of
opposites ; horrible things, beautiful things, heart-breaks
and heart-rejoicing things were jumbled up close together,
so that the impression left upon one's mind was more
curious than clear. But everywhere I had found one
single satisfying thing, unbounded opportunity to speak
to people about Jesus Christ. " After it, follow it, follow
the Gleam " might have been written all over the walls.
Some poor sufferers naturally were too preoccupied to
listen. Some were too careless. Some too hard. But
the greater number were ready, and a few were even
INTENSITY 65
eager. There was no need to search for a way to the
heart. The approaches lay all open. Perhaps one has
to be an Evangelistic missionary, unaccustomed to find
sympathy ready created, and affection already awakened,
to appreciate at its full value such an opportunity.
It was the effect of an evident cause. The cause was
familiar enough. But, standing alongside that Cause at
work, the familiar took edge and point, and its force
was felt in a new fashion. We realised then as we had
not before how much hung upon how little. One
infinitesimal carelessness as to surgical cleanliness, one
moment's diverted attention, one swerve of the knife in
the doctor's hand, and that particular door of access to a
soul for whom Christ died might be for ever barred. It
was awesome to feel that such a tremendous conse-
quence depended on something so delicate that when
you would define it exactly, you could not. Viewed
in this searching surgical light, everything short of the
most scrupulous attention to even apparently unimportant
minutiae, everything short of intense concentration, seemed
criminal.
But only a few minutes had passed since the old man
had lain down. " Look ! " said the doctor, and I saw the
yellow-ochre lens slip smooth like a ripe little seed from
its cell. The doctor held up his fingers, " Count ! "
And the old man counted four. There was a moment
of pure human pleasure then.
Later I saw that happy old man. He had a room to
himself where his friends were allowed to wait on him.
He was peaceful, had no pain, did not mind his bandages,
wearied not at all. To one who finds half a day's idle
5
66 "FOLLOW THE GLEAM"
captivity pure misery, the patience of these people is
rebuking. He made a perfect recovery, and it needs
but a little imagination to see him as he truly is in his
distant village to-day, a contented old man, an inspirer
of hope to those in whose eyes " the cataract flower has
fallen." He and his heard daily while in hospital about
the great Eye Opener for whose sake that help was
given. In his case the result is not known. But it is
impossible to believe the story would leave no mark
upon him. And could there be a kinder way of making
a mark for Eternity ?
Are any dispirited still, and still in perplexity as
to our ways of trying to win souls for Jesus Christ ?
May I say, stop looking at us. Look instead at the
Medical Missions. They are dotted about from the
South to Cashmere. Focus upon one of them, and
forget discouragement in giving some practical bit of
help. Viewed every way, discouragement is surely a
weak and cowardly thing, sign of a spiritual near-
sightedness which must limit one all round. True work
can never die. Let us believe it and be glad. We
have only one thing to do : " This one thing I do. I
press." Let us press on all together in the missionary
enterprise, past the dull joy of discouragement, and
through it, out into the clear air where we can see The
Gleam.
CHAPTER XI
"The Grace of the People to come"
WHAT is the use of following the Gleam ? Does it
lead to anything definite ? To which we would
answer, Follow and know : follow and see that
most tangible thing, a Christian home in a Hindu town.
The mountains which divide British India from
Travancore fall into foothills north of us ; a wild track
leading through them opens into a plain with another
encircling mountain guard. To save time and avoid
heat we usually travel by night, but our bandy man, the
bullock driver, believes the track is haunted by tigers
(which, much to my disappointment, are always entirely
invisible). So in a recent journey we travelled by day
to escape the fabulous beasts, and arrived Iat3 in the
evening at our destination, a town in the northern plain.
The house to which we were bound was reached at
last, the warmest of welcomes was waiting there ; but it
was late to disturb our Indian friends, so we searched
for a place to pitch a camp cot, and finally found a
broken-down archway sometimes used as a cattle-pen.
I had a young convert girl with me. It was her
first experience of a cow-house for a bedroom, and she
did not appreciate it. But she remembered the manger,
•7
68 "THE GRACE OP THE PEOPLE TO COME"
and that changed the face of things. There is a special
little joy in being allowed to tread, even so far off, in the
very way He went. Happily, then, we swept up the
straw, and piled it in a corner, and cleaned up generally,
till by the light of our lantern the place looked pos-
sible, and almost comfortable. Soon three varieties of
human snores mingled with the bulls' snores, and five
weary creatures were at rest. The bandy man and cook
boy were just outside the passage. They never stirred
till morning. The girl, who was close to me, slept in the
same steady determined fashion. I was not so fortunate,
for the sounds around were persistent.
The archway ended in a courtyard. Next to it,
separated only by a low mud wall, was another court-
yard, very much inhabited. Some old men had settled
themselves on the verandah and were talking. The thin
cracked quavering voices wandered on in endless disser-
tations upon rupees, annas, pies. I found myself listening
against my will, and got inextricably entangled in their
financial complications. And I wondered at the mental
arithmetic apparatus possessed by such very old gentle-
men, for they revelled in the intricate, and dealt deeply
in fractions. Their manipulation of the forty-eighth part
of one and fourpence was a thing to remember; but it
baffled me. Afterwards came betel-nut, the usual refresh-
ment. Then more talk. Suddenly the voices fell to a
chuckling mumble.
There are some sounds, like the squeak of a slate
pencil, that seem to convert one into a piece of steel
wire subjected to the operations of a leisurely file.
Such a sound is continuous conversation on a hot night
"THOU SHALT HEAR WHAT THEY SAY" 69
after a journey. After a while the voices grew sharper,
and I heard what wakened every nerve in me. They
were discussing a lad who evidently wanted to be a
Christian. They had settled upon some plan of action
when they talked low. Now having settled upon it they
were almost riotous. There was more talk. The voices,
ancient as they were, grew keen and purposeful. One
could only pray for the boy, whoever he was, as one
thought of him sleeping peacefully somewhere near, un-
conscious of the plots they were weaving round him.
There was something uncomfortable in overhearing a
conversation emphatically not meant for me. However,
I reflected that I could not suitably make myself known
to those men just then, and remembering how Gideon
was caused to overhear a conversation once, I concluded
God had said " Thou shalt hear what they say," and was
quiet. Next day I found out who the boy was, a young
inquirer, too young to come out as a Christian. He
was protected through all that followed. The plots fell
harmless. Even so, even here,
" Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own."
The night was not still even after the old men
departed. About midnight some one began to chant
praises to Siva, a blind man, we afterwards found, who
had vowed to chant some hundred stanzas twice every
night throughout his life. On and on he went in the
plaintive minor of India's old prayer-music. While it
was still dark before sunrise he began again, and this
time there was a woman's voice faintly following.
70 "THE GRACE OF THE PEOPLE TO COME"
It was a new experience to lie there and hear all
this. And I felt that a night in a heathen town and
almost in a heathen house was a revealing thing. " My
principal grief was, and so it has continued to be, that I
grieved so very little," said Eagland, years ago.
We had come to that town because Victory, one of
our convert girls who had married Liegeman, one of Mr.
Walker's convert boys, was in sore trouble over the
serious illness of her little daughter. Up till then she
and her husband had been spared all anxiety, and the
peacefulness of that little home had been a thought of
peace to us, and a wonder to the Hindus, who used one
of their favourite names for heaven when describing it.
As for Victory, they called her by a beautiful name.
One day an old ascetic, proof to preaching, came in to
see me when I was there. " She is gold, pure gold," he
said to me, pointing to Victory, who was busy over her
household work. And I found Pure Gold was her name
among the Hindu neighbours.
But suddenly the blue skies clouded. One of the
most fatal of tropical diseases had seized the little child,
that bright home's little joy. She lay in great suffering
and most pathetic weakness, knowing only that she
wanted her mother's arms to be always round her, and
her mother's face within reach of the touch of her little
hands. That poor mother was worn out with night and
day nursing and housework combined, for the convert
has no relations to come and help at such times. The
strain was almost too much for her, and the Hindus
watched curiously. What would happen now ? For
days they watched, coming constantly to inquire, always
"GREAT IS THY LOVING-KINDNESS " 71
sympathetic, but always on the alert to notice what was
going on. And through all the long trial the father and
mother were strengthened to glorify God.
Perhaps what touched the Hindus most was a little
incident which happened the day the child began to
recover. Upon waking from a long refreshing sleep the
white and red of an embroidered text fastened to a dark
beam in the ceiling caught her attention, and she pointed
to it. Her thankful mother could hardly see for the
" water of joy " which filled her eyes, but she read the
text aloud : " Great is Thy loving-kindness toward me."
To the reverent Indian mind this was a thing which
appealed. The story was told all down the street, and
opened the way for many conversations. " I will never
water the baby's milk ; no, never again," said the milk-
woman, through whose activities in that direction the
illness probably came. And she kept her word for a
fortnight.
When you stay in such a home right among the
Hindus, with whom as in the hospital you are friends
already, half the difficulties of itinerating work are non-
existent, and the other half are in abeyance. You are
near the people, nearer than in bungalow or tent. They
let you into their lives' inner rooms, and you see strange
things there. These things make you all the more
thankful for the fact of these Christian homes scattered
like light-seeds on the dark soil. In hours when the
overwhelming forces of evil seem wholly in ascendance,
" I take to witness the Grace of the people to come."
Such a witness is worth everything; it is strong with the
promise of hope.
72 "THE GRACE OF THE PEOPLE TO COME"
Life, with Indian fellow-Christians for one's com-
panions, draws one very close to them, and makes that
Grace a very shining quality. One writes after ex-
perience. Of course there are bound to be disappoint-
ments. There are everywhere. But the impress left
upon me by a year of such life is a very loving
impress. I cannot forget the sympathy when serious
illness came to the bungalow, and took my fellow mis-
sionaries away. No touch is tenderer than the Indian
touch in trouble. Their way of comforting is the child's
way, the unconscious way that somehow helps without
hurting. The patience of their kindness and their
fealty are unfailing. To the Indian missionary, at least,
it cannot be called sacrifice to lose one's English identity
and let oneself be bound in the bundle of life with one's
Indian brothers and sisters. But the more India becomes
home, the more the longing burns within one that this
land should be purified, swept clean from north to south
as by a wave of fire ; for if ever a people were created
to be a crown of glory and a royal diadem, surely the
people of India were. Sentiment, some will say, and
smile. But to the one who writes, it seems true.
Much that may be seen and heard in ordinary con-
verse in an ordinary Hindu home is natural and happy.
Convention cannot kill nature. Theoretically the woman
is nothing and nowhere. Practically she is by no means
a nonentity. " Aiyo, Aiyo ! it is a girl ! " the new baby
is unwelcome. But once the shock is over the baby-girl
is loved. There is any amount of noisy quarrelling ; if
words were blows half the population would be extinct
to-morrow. But on the other hand, when you consider
THE REAL DIFFERENCE 73
the compound family system, and recollect the close
quarters in which such variety of disposition is packed,
you will be amazed that so many people contrive to exist
in tranquillity. The thing which in the main distin-
guishes life in such a community from life in England
is, that here any moment you may suddenly come upon
Sin sunning itself out in the open, all unashamed. And
nobody is startled.
One afternoon some pleasant-faced women, after
having finished their household work, sat down with me
on the steps leading to the canal where they drew their
water. The canal suggested reminiscences. " Yes," said
one, alluding to another piece of water to which her
neighbour had referred, " that tank used to be pure
enough to bathe the god and goddess in, but one year it
dried up, and they found it denied with bones." Then
she entered into details, only understood in India, which
led off into a casual remark about a little girl who was
ill, and therefore living with her father. Why " therefore ? "
Children sick or well usually live in their parents' homes,
and I inquired about her, and heard this short true tale :
Her father had married out of caste, and been rutcasted
in consequence, which caused him inconvenience. So one
morning his wife was found with a poisoned rag across
her mouth, and to cut clear of all complications the little
daughter was sent elsewhere. I had no need to ask
where. There are houses in Tinnevelly town, and in
every other Temple-town, where such little ones are wel-
come. But the child had been ill, and had been sent home
to her father, who would return her when she was well.
Was nothing done ? What could be done ? How obtain
74
sufficient proof ? Besides, why concern oneself in
another's business ? So the double crime passed un-
recorded except in the unsurprised memories of men.
How one gets to hate sin as if it were a physical foe
who could be throttled to death if only he could be
caught ! I thought of that little innocent girl only eight
years old, a bright intelligent child they said, and very
affectionate. Slow crawled the waters of the canal like
a stealthy brown snake at our feet. I thought of the
things I had heard had been done on its banks. One
could have better borne to see that child held under
those waters, held till she struggled no longer, than face
out what life might mean for her.
To hear about such a little one is to set every faculty
to work to try to save her. But the hands that hold do
not lightly let go. At such times, when baffled at every
turn, almost despairing, though one will not despair, the
only thing that shines is the Coming of the Lord. His
Coming will end all the wickedness. " When will the
evening be measured, the night be gone ? We are full
of tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day ! "
" Lord Jesus, take wide steps. 0 my Lord, come over
mountains at one stride ! Oh, if He would fold the
heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time
and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the
Lamb's wife for her Husband ! "
How few want that to happen is something you
realise when you search for a Christian house to which
you have been directed through the labyrinth of a
Hindu town. India is awake, the sanguine tell us,
meaning that some few or many — the terms are relative
A DROP ; A GRAIN 75
— of India's Christians are awake. Supposing all the
Christians in the land were awake, it would not mean
that India itself had awakened. The Christians of India
are not India. There are a hundred millions of people in
India to-day who have never even heard of Jesus Christ,
and who as things are now have not the remotest chance
to hear about Him. There are millions more who have
heard very little, if anything; but, not counting those, there
are a hundred millions who cannot possibly hear. The
fact is overwhelming. It crushes down upon us. If we
could realise its full force for one single minute it would
crush us too much. It would break our hearts. But we
do not realise it. We speak in a language we do not
understand. We talk of millions. What are millions ?
When we stop and try to lay hold upon the word, and
make it open to us, it closes up, or slips away, and we
catch elusive glimpses of it : that is all.
A hundred millions : no effort of the imagination
materially helps us to grasp that which is beyond our
grasp. But look at this photograph. Look at it as
a whole, and then in detail. Suppose yourself in the
midst of it, in the thick of the press, jammed in by the
car, with the glare and the glitter, and the overwhelming
heat and noise beating and dancing and whirling about
you. Make yourself slowly apprehend that the stream
that seems to stretch so far is only the trickling of a
drop from the great sea of Indian life; the mass that'
moves as a huge whole is hardly as a grain of dust from
the heap of the population. How vast the sea, how
immense the heap must be !
But alone in the quiet night the crush of the fact is
76 "THE GRACE OF THE PEOPLE TO COME"
heaviest. You may listen then to the voice of one of
the multitude. It has time to enter into you, with its
separate and distinct note of invitation to stop again
and think. One of the last nights spent in that
Hindu town was as wakeful as the first; for the blind
man, whose routine involved other streets than his own,
seemed to spend longer than usual in his wanderings
and prayers. On and on, hour after hour, now near
and clear, now gradually distancing and softening, on
and on untiringly rose the mournful monotone, " Siva-
Sivah ! Siva-Sivah ! " till I almost held my breath to
hear a voice that would answer him, almost strained
my eyes to see a face that would lean to him through
the dark. And then the night, with that strange power
night has, took the sadness, and unrolled it to the full,
took the sense of the drear and sharpened it, took the
dark and magnified it till there was no room for any
light. The soul of the land seemed out in the dark,
wandering desolate up and down, crying ever over and
over, " Siva-Sivah ! Siva-Sivah ! "
Perhaps the night served as foil for the morning, each
detail stands out with such bright distinctness. A pair
of sparrows had built in the kitchen, within hand's
reach, but, of course, they had not been molested, and
the fearless flying in and out of the birds, and the cheer-
ful twittering of the nestlings, gave character to the
house. It, too, was a nest. And now that the nestling
was well again, the house-nest was full of happiness and
little sounds of content. We spent the forenoon with
the pastor's family, sharing their noontide meal; and
again the bird's nest was suggested, for the house was
THE MORNING COMETH 77
packed as closely as any nest with children, and the merry
little things' vocal zeal on that hot day was inspiring.
" The Grace of the people to come, whose little ones
rejoice in gladness," is a Grace all sunlit. Thank God
for the true Christian homes which must multiply with
the years, however few there are now. Surely India's
future will be better than her past. " Howbeit this day
be not Christ's, the morrow shall be His."
CHAPTER XII
Alone
ONE would like to write straight on of glad things
now, without a break to the end. But that would
not be true. And it is on my mind to win your
help for our Indian comrades situated as Victory and her
husband, and so very many are, alone among Hindus
or Mohammedans, who, however friendly on the common
plane of life, consider the Christian a mistake, and his
religion a delusion or a sin, according to the intensity
with which their own is held. To such there must
come moments of peculiar loneliness. I realised this
more acutely than one can easily describe, when not
long ago I spent an afternoon alone with some opposing
Hindus.
We had gone as a band of women to a neighbouring
town, famous for its temple built into a rock. The
separate castes live in separate quarters. We had
divided two and two so as to reach as many as possible.
The Brahman quarter had fallen to my share. My com-
panion was a young convert girl.
We were walking quietly towards the Brahman street
when a boy was sent to tell us that a deputation of
Bralimans would wait upon me in the rest-house at the
78
No CHOICE BUT TO OBEY 79
entrance to the street. I could not refuse to go, for no
man-missionary had visited that town for over two
years. I could not expose a young girl to the gaze and
remarks of the men. So I went alone.
The rest-house is a lofty stone-built room, with a
raised dais on either side. It was crowded with men on
one side. The other side was left for me. The door
was open, and packed with spectators. They pointed to
the empty side of the dais, and all fronted round facing
me.
I found they knew a good deal about Christianity.
Several had studied in Mission schools. All knew
Christians ; so there was something to go upon. But
they began by asking why in the first instance we
brought a message to India which India did not want.
I told them how long ago their forefathers and ours
lived as brothers on the northern tableland ; how we
and they had drifted apart, they travelling south, we
west ; how the Good Tidings came to us of the west ;
and how our ascended Eedeemer and King had told us
to share the great joy with others.
They were interested in this, and observed that such
being the wish of our Guru, we as His disciples had no
choice but to obey. (The East has much to teach the
West upon the duty of obedience.) Only, they added,
in the interval of separation, God the Supreme had
divided their half of the brotherhood into many sub-
divisions, whereas ours had remained a homogeneous
mass. The message we had brought would, they be-
lieved, tend to disorganise the existing order, and reduce
their complex system into something as simple as ours —
80 ALONE
in other words, do away with caste : and that therefore
Christianity was not a desirable religion for India.
" The truth is," writes the keen observer quoted before,
" that the Asiatics, like the Jews, dislike Christianity, see
in it an ideal they do not love, a promise they do not
desire, and a pulverising force which must shatter their
civilisations." That is exactly how those men viewed it,
and they spoke out the feeling of their race. I had no
desire to attack their social system, or to defend ours
(though a word of explanation seemed required). I only
wanted to witness to a living, loving, personal Saviour.
And I longed for more power and glow to show that love
in its breadth, length, depth, height. Tamil is rich in
words expressing almost every shade of thought. Our
message never sounds more alluring than when told in a
language which seems formed to convey spiritual ideas. So,
confident in the promise that words would be given, and
would, though spoken in weakness, be clothed in strength,
and glad in the consciousness that I had brought them
no foreign religion (the book is an Eastern book, per-
meated with the spirit of the East), and gladder still in
the certainty that the Gospel is the power of God unto
salvation whether in East or West, I spoke and hoped
with a great hope.
They listened splendidly. There is something in the
story which draws. But even as they listened, leaning for-
ward, watchful, silent, wholly attentive, their inscrutable
faces told me nothing.
After listening patiently, as is the Eastern way, they
spoke at some length. The message was wonderful,
beautiful, excellent truly for those to whom it pertained.
"WE DON'T WANT IT" 81
But as for themselves, " Why throw away the fruit in
one's hand, and long for the fruit on the tree ? " Desire
is maya, illusion ; virtue consists in cessation from desire.
" But we are glad," they added, " to form friendship with
you. As our friend, we believe, you have come to our
town." And in the circumlocution of the courteous and
leisurely East, many speeches followed, to which answers
were allowed, till we came to closer quarters, and they
spoke more directly what they meant. Like drops of
icy water, dropping, dropping, fell their words on one's
hot hope.
" If a heap of sugar were piled on the floor, would you
have to call the ants to come ? They would come with-
out any call. If your religion were good for this land,
those best fitted to judge of its merits, we, the Brahmans,
would have led the way to it. As it is, the undiscerning
run. The poor and profoundly ignorant run. We are
not found in your Way."
" Look at this town," said another, pointing out through
the door to the long stretching Brahman street ; " have
you a Christian here ? "
" Yes, one ; but such a one ! And he is here for
pay!"
" Look at the next town, and the next." They named
half a dozen towns. " Have you any living there who
are not there for pay ? "
" And then," continued a triumphant voice, " look how
your Christians live. Do your Christians never lie ?
never steal ? never bear false witness ? And supposing
they were exemplary, what are they worth after all ?
How many belong to us ? "
6
82 ALONE
" Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed
on Him ? " It was not a new question. As for the slur
cast on the Christians' character, though one could not
say all were true, one could name those who were.
There was a confusion of conflicting voices, as the names
were tossed about. " Your Christian poet ! He was my
father's friend. A great scholar, we know his poetry ! "
" Eenegade ! Eenegade ! " " No, poet ! " Then, naming
another of God's noblemen, one from the caste which has
yielded most Christians, I set the ball rolling in an
opposite direction ; all there knew him and his stainless
life, and had to confess it was good.
It is something to have such names to name ; but no
names, no facts, can compel a Hindu to come out in the
open and face them. With him an argument consists in
dodging about from tree to tree. You follow him to one, to
find he is looking at you from round the slippery trunk
of another. For in this interminable jungle the trees are
palms with stems like poles. Nothing so four-square as
an oak confronts you anywhere.
It was vain to follow from tree to tree, and seeing
one could not be drawn to try, they came back to the
first, and repeated that the nation (meaning themselves)
had shown no appreciation of our religion. The ants
avoided the sugar ; which proved it was not sweet or
nutritious to them, whatever it might be to us. There
was another skirmish round divers inviting objections,
but their final return to the argument based on an
illustration, gave one the chance to explain why all
who hear of Him do not taste and see that the Lord
is good. The ants have nothing to leave behind in
WHAT? WHEN? WHY? 83
order to taste the sugar. We have to leave our sin
before we can truly taste the heavenly food.
This started questions. What is sin ? When did
it come into existence ? Why is it allowed to continue ?
Which is stronger, good or evil ? If good, then how
is it that it is overcome by evil ? If the doctrine of
reincarnation, which teaches that suffering in this life
is resultant from sin in a former birth, is untrue, how
then do we account for the suffering of innocent children ?
If we answer that often they suffer for their parents'
sin, how do we prove God just? What about the
hereafter ? How will those be dealt with who know
nothing of the way which we affirm is the only way
to bliss ? These were a few of the questions showered
upon us from all sides at once. One sympathised with
the questioners, for the questions are as old as the mind
of man.
So looking up for answers which should satisfy even
where they could not explain, I began with the last
question, and was reading that heart-resting word of
the Lord : " But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes," — when a voice broke in
authoritatively :
"We cannot accept answers from that book. Your
own Gurus are not agreed about it. Some say it is
composed of legends and fables, mere myths at best.
Yes," and he turned to the men, " there are Christian
scholars who say so. The book is not to be regarded
as entirely true."
It was evident he had read, and somewhat misunder-
stood, translations of certain English articles bearing
84 ALONE
upon the inspiration of the Bible, which have begun
to appear in India. One felt as if one had been hit
by mistake by a shot from one's own side. I was not
prepared to find this objection in a remote country town,
and not wishing to get involved in such discussion,
tried to lead them back to the great central truth upon
which all Christians, whatever their opinion may be
about other matters, are certainly agreed. But the
men were impatient now. "You come to us with a
mutilated book about which you differ among yourselves !
You want us to introduce the religion which it teaches
to our women ! We will not have it. We do not want
it. You are one, aloue. We are the many ; how can
the one be right, and all the number wrong ? We have
our god. You see his temple there. We have our
books, which your wise men greatly prize. Many of
your sages are coming to see that ours, the ancient
religion, is true, and yours, born but yesterday; is false."
(They love this fallacious argument.) " Listen ! " and
they named the few converts won from nominal Chris-
tianity to nominal Hinduism. " Listen ! " and they
quoted the remarks of one, a Christian visitor to India,
who, in his anxiety to show sympathy with the best
there is in the higher Hinduism, seemed to these men,
its votaries, almost to apologise to it for the vandalism
of venturing to differ from it in anything.
There is much that is noble in ancient Hindu
thought. Anything like an intolerant attitude towards
it can only repel those whom we would win. God
spoke to men in the old days. His light enlightened
them. But the echoes have become confused, the light
"You ARE ALONE" 85
blurred. And this is taking Hinduism at its best, as
the Ve'das show it, as scholars think it. Very far
different is its worst, as the masses know it and
live it. But taking it at its best, is this blur and
this confusion good enough for men who are brother-
men with us ? Go back if you will to the old books :
can you find soul-food in them ? Dare you die on
them ? Oh, there is only one Book which feeds, only
one Book upon which we dare die ! Lord, to whom
shall this nation go ? Lord, to whom shall we go, or
they ? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
There was some angry astonished talk among the
men. Personally they were perfectly courteous, but
the preposterous nature of our proposals roused them,
much as a proposal made in all seriousness to a company
of Englishmen to become Mohammedans would have
roused them, had they stopped to consider it at all.
They talked the more unrestrainedly because I, being
only a woman, did not count as anybody, and if one
had been detached enough to listen from an outside
position it would have been wonderfully interesting.
Chances for such character study are rare in tae South.
But one felt too much concerned in the issue of that
conversation to be able to detach oneself. All I could
see just then was this body of strong intelligent men,
refusing our Lord Jesus Christ.
" You are alone," said one at last, when the excite-
ment had subsided, " and you see how many we are.
This is how the case stands all over India. Who fill
the highest positions open as yet to us ? Hindus.
Who then rule the land, though you white rulers do
86 ALONE
not know it ? Hindus. And who will rule it ? Do
you think your Lord Jesus Christ will rule it ? " And
they laughed in scorn. Outside in the street people
pressed round the door. They caught the laugh, and
passed it on, till it seemed as if the whole town were
laughing that scornful laugh. One felt alone then.
Do you wonder at it ? I wondered, when I thought
of it, for of course I was not alone. And quickly the
soothing of that knowledge came, and yet there was for
the moment the sense of human loneliness. I searched
through the long row of faces opposite, and then through
the crowd of faces round the door, to find one with a
look of recognition in it ; but I did not find one. I
listened as the many voices spoke, to hear one with a
note of responsiveness in it, but I did not hear one. It
was as if one's whole being were laid bare to the grief
of seeing His love refused. Oh, that one could have
shown Him more clearly, that there had been someone
else to speak ! But there was no one else to speak, no
one else just then to care. That was the loneliness of it.
" The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,"
comes a voice to us from the brave new West. " It is
foolish for you to be lonely. You and the stars are
fighting together." And yet this loneliness, weak,
foolish, unreasonable, what you will, is often the portion
of our Indian comrades out in the firing line. We have
your sympathy. Have they ?
Had this day's work ended otherwise, you would have
heard of it long ago. No effort of ours could have
confined the rumour of it. For it is not usual in the
history of Indian missions to find a company of Brahmans
THE FLASH THROUGH THE BLUE 87
receive the truth with intention to obey it. But we
believe to see the unusual, and it never becomes a light
thing to see in literal fact what the prophet foresaw, and
the first great missionary experienced, the rejection of
our Lord Jesus Christ by those best fitted to understand
Him. There are places where He stands now, " all day
long," with " hands stretched forth," and there still are
those who push those hands away, or ignore them. Lord,
we sympathise with Thee ! Let us never be unresponsive
to Thee. Let us never be a disappointment to Thee.
But even as one writes, the swift thought turns and
flashes up. One is out in that scoffing crowd again, the
tumult of voices is round one, as one stands now out in
the street ; and for the moment the blue above becomes,
as it were, all transparent, cleft through by a sudden
ray;
"Multitudes — multitudes— stood up in bliss,
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair ;
With harps, palms, wedding garments, kiss of peace,
And crowned and haloed hair.
" Tier above tier they rose and rose and rose
So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames,
No man could number them, no tongue disclose
Their sacred secret names.
"As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood
Fed all, one breath swept through them, myriad-voiced
They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood
And worshipped and rejoiced."
Thank God for that flash through the blue. Thank
God for the many in whom Love will have its way, for the
great multitude of all nations and kindreds and peoples
and tongues. But through the little while that may
88 ALONE
intervene till we hear the loud voice saying in heaven,
" Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom
of our God, and the power of His Christ," will you
remember your Indian comrades who are often stationed
in places where there is little upon which human hope
can feed ; and will you ask for them that they may be
filled with quenchless, abounding, victorious hope by the
power of the Holy Ghost, and comforted in loneliness
by the presence of our Lord ?
CHAPTER XIII
"No Beauty that we should desire Him"
" "VTOUE Christian poet ! he was my father's friend ! a
J- great scholar. We know his poetry."
As the voice spoke I saw the man it named : a
tall gaunt figure in white ; white-turbaned head ; eyes
which observed ; face, olive in colouring, seamed and lined
all over, furrowed deep across the forehead ; character in
every movement of the long slender hands ; strong affec-
tion in the glance of the dark piercing eyes.
I saw him as he first photographed himself'upon me.
It was one of those days when one's mental economy,
instead of attending to its proper business, seems to lie
out thin, like a sensitive film, intent on receiving im-
pressions. It was the last day of my final examination
in Tamil. The old scholar was one of the Examiners.
He came early, seated himself comfortably, and put on
his spectacles. We were alone for awhile ; beyond the
salaam of greeting neither of us spoke : the victim on
such occasions is not talkative. But the old man looked
at me, and his keen eyes filled with sympathy. " Why
this fear ? " he said, pointing up, " God is."
Some words and some gestures live. That hand point-
ing upward, that voice saying " God is," are as if hours,
89
90 "No BEAUTY THAT WE SHOULD DESIRE HIM"
not years, had passed since then. The overwhelming
nervousness which had made the impending viva voce
almost a physical impossibility passed in part at least.
Oh, the faithlessness, the cowardice of fear, when God,
the Doer, as the name he used suggested, is.
And again I saw him. He was dying ; unconscious, it
was thought. I had taken a card with " Jesus " written
large in Tamil. " He will not know you ; he cannot
read now," said the watchers sadly. But he opened his
eyes, and saw the Word, and it was as if a great light
passed over his face. Never shall I forget that light
and the smile that looked out of those loving old eyes as
they lingered over the Word. Then we saw he was
trying to lift his hand. Some one helped him, and the
finger traced it as if writing it, character by character.
No one spoke. He could not speak, but the trembling
finger still traced the Word over and over. Then the
lips moved, and the dark eyes, dim with death's dimness,
shone. We knew he was speaking to Jesus. Then
with a satisfied, rested look, like the look of a little tired
child that finds itself safe in its mother's arms, and is so
glad just to go to sleep, the old man turned, and fell
asleep, his hand still touching caressingly the dear
Word " JESUS."
We all have a room within us, hung with pictures.
Sometimes when the people about us least know it, we
leave them to talk, and go into that room, and shut the
door very quietly. Then their voices sound a long way
off, like the sound of the sea waves falling on a far-away
other-wTorld shore. And we look at our pictures. Time
does not count in the Picture Eoom. There is no hurry-
"RENEGADE!" "POET!" 91
ing of clocks, no beat of bells. But a moment may
show a month's pictures, as moments and months are
counted elsewhere ; and we may look at the pictures of
years, quite leisurely, between the " Don't you think so ? "
of the talker outside, and the " Yes " or " No " we hear
ourselves say in answer. So I saw these pictures of our
old friend, and many another distinctly, in the second of
time between the shouts, " Kenegade ! " " No, poet ! "
Then I came out of the Picture Eoom, and the voices
sounded near and loud, clashing, jarring.
What created the difference wide as space between
that man and these ? In race, environment, ideal, he
was once as they are now.
It is seldom that such a question can be answered
with any degree of detail, but Mr. Walker, the old man's
friend, persuaded him to answer it in writing. This
writing he translated, and one day when I was wishing I
knew something more of one who had impressed me
more than any Indian I had then met, he gave me the
manuscript to read. It seems to me worth giving you.
You will understand that it loses in translation. But
the heart in sympathy will feel the heart beat through it,
coldly though it must read, and heavily, in comparison
with the warmth and lightness of the Indian original.
The manuscript is headed, " How I became a Chris-
tian: written in 1893." Then the text, "Be ready
always to give an answer to every man that asketh a
reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and
fear," or as the Tamil has it, " with meekness and rever-
ence." With meekness and reverence, then, he begins :
" If asked to state what was the Cause of my breaking oft1
92 "No BEAUTY THAT WE SHOULD DESIRE HIM"
with Hinduism to become a Christian, what Cause can I
assign except only the tender compassion of Heavenly
grace ? At the same time I am ready to narrate the
subsidiary means for so great a change, which that
Heavenly grace employed from time to time, and to
unite in order the events which proved conducive to my
conversion."
A few strenuous words as to Hinduism preface this in-
troduction. He writes as an Indian poet does, wrapping
thoughts in tight bundles, which once unfastened refuse
to be packed up again in as small compass. So that we
cannot do justice to its compressed intensity. English
sounds diffuse after such Tamil.
As a Hindu of the stricter type, his life, he says, was
sin : sin which did not recognise its sinfulness. Utter-
most darkness was around him and within him. Then
came the tenderness of God's compassion, the grace which
cares. As a hand it drew him, lifted him out of the
abyss, set him in the Way, made him, once a Hindu and
an alien, meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the
saints in light. Again and again in language which
seems to be searching for words warm enough and bright
enough to radiate forth the joy that is in him, he piles
verse upon verse in praise of the Father who delivered
him from the power of darkness, and translated him
into the kingdom of His dear Son.
" I was a Hindu of the strict Vaishnavite sect."
[Vaishnavites are votaries of Vishnu, the second person
in the Hindu triad.] " I had only one brother, younger
than myself. My father possessed in an eminent degree
the excellent characteristics of benevolence, compassion,
HOME INFLUENCES 93
merciful pity, and kindness to animals. With the ex-
ception of a few defects he was consistently a zealous
votary of the Vaishnavite creed. He possessed great
ability in understanding the meaning of the Tamil
classics, and in expounding them to others. The study
of these formed his mental pastime. He was neither
very rich nor very poor ; and he was held in high
esteem by the scholars, Government officials, and mag-
nates of his day. At the age of forty-seven the re-
linquishment of his body befell him, but before this he
had sought out and married to me, then aged thirteen
and a half, a small girl-child. Moreover, he had divided
the family property so that there should be no room for
trouble or disputes on the part of our relatives. This
arrangement proved most serviceable to us boys, in the
matter of our education. While my father still lived
he had taught me the Ramayana, and my mother, who
was a keen-minded woman, used to tell us the poem's
story, and explain the meaning of the stanzas.
" It was during my father's lifetime that I was initi-
ated. This Initiation includes the Sealing, or Branding,
which means the branding of both shoulders of the
votary by a golden discus, heated red-hot in the sacri-
ficial fire, in token that he is a devotee, slave of Vishnu,
that he will never henceforth break his fast without
having first performed the prescribed daily ceremonies,
and that he will faithfully observe such and such rites.
I was only a small boy at the time, so two strong men
gripped me firmly from behind, and held me tight. The
heat and pain were intolerable : my eyes filled with
tears. But it would have been disgrace and the height
94 "No BEAUTY THAT WE SHOULD DESIRE HIM"
of misdemeanour at such a moment to cry aloud. My
father had some others branded with me, as a meritorious
act of charity : the cost was one hundred rupees. I was
the only one in our family on whom the rite was per-
formed. It is now nearly fifty-two years since these
brand marks were stamped upon me, but they are still
only too clearly visible. I was then taught by our
Guru to repeat the chief and fundamental mantra, which,
being interpreted, means ' All adoration to Vishnu, the
mystic Om.'
" When I was eighteen years of age I was a bitter foe
not of Christianity as such, but of those who, according
to the fashion of that period, wrote down their names as
Christians, while they disgraced the glorious name of
Christ. . . .
" From my eighteenth year, my brother and myself,
instead of spending our time idly, studied carefully, by
our own exertions, the Tamil classics. Not only so, but
since printed copies of Tamil grammatical works were
then unprocurable, we borrowed, from a respected senior,
palm-leaf copies of the standard grammars (written in
poetical form) and wrote out new copies for ourselves
on palmyra leaves. At that time there were only two
or three scholars in the whole district who were really
versed in Tamil. One of these was a friend of my
father. We took advantage of the fact, attached our-
selves to him, and exerted ourselves to study. For a
year and a half we rendered him the service of disciples,
and so pursued our studies. Still later we worked with
earnest ardour, and thus completed our grammatical
studies. If I had not given myself thus to grammatical
INDIAN CULTURE 95
study, how should I ever have become a Tamil Pandit ?
Had I not become a Tamil Pandit how should I ever
have become closely acquainted with Christian truth ?
It is clear to me, therefore, that it was the doing of the
Holy Mind, and that alone, which attracted me from early
youth to Tamil studies."
Thus far the education of one who was to become
pre-eminently the Christian Tamil scholar of South
India. Those who are accustomed to look upon " the
poor heathen " en masse, as ignorant barbarians, will
read, with some surprise perhaps, this simple account of
a cultured home, where the study of the classics was the
pastime of the father, and the telling of beautiful old
world tales to her little sons, the mother's pleasure.
Such pastime and such pleasure imply a knowledge of
the ancient language in which all poetry is written, and
this in itself, as any scholar versed in it will acknow-
ledge, is the study of a lifetime.
Both brothers became Pandits, Professors of Tamil, in
missionary colleges, and thus came in contact for the
first time with vital Christianity.
The story continues :
" Before I undertook this work, I knew nothing really
of Christianity. True, when I was about ten years old,
a tract called ' The Incarnation of Grace ' fell into my
hands. In it Vishnu's ten incarnations were described
in order, and the abominations in each were dilated
upon. But this was the only impression left on my
mind. The closing part of it, describing the holy attri-
butes and deeds of Him who is the Form of Salvation,
had no effect on me at all.
96 "No BEAUTY THAT WE SHOULD DESIRE HIM"
" When I began my Pandit work the missionary to
whom I gave lessons in the language treated me with
considerable kindness, and used to speak to me about
the Christian Way. Though his words upon this subject
were as gall and wormwood to my Hindu soul, yet by
degrees his excellent character and deeds won upon me,
and induced me to listen to what he said without gain-
saying. A little later I borrowed a copy of the Tamil
Scriptures, and began to read it. I read as far as the
twentieth chapter of Exodus, in order, from the beginning.
From what I thus read I got it firmly fixed in my mind,
that the creation of the world, the advent of sin, the
Deluge, and other following incidents, are faithfully and
truly narrated in the Bible, and that all the stories which
occur in the Vaishnavite books about these subjects are
inventions, baseless myths, and garnished pleasantries.
Thus the daily ceremonies which I, as a Vaishnavite,
scrupulously observed, my fastings, attendances at the
religious festivals with which each month ends, and Caste
etiquette and distinctions, palled upon my taste.
" It was at this juncture that my mind became deeply
impressed with the consciousness that I should have to
face the responsibility of my sins, and that the paltry
subterfuges and atonements which are found in Hinduism
tfere useless and vain. But what of this ? Does not
the poet remind us how the foolish cock, through sheer
force of habit, continues its idiotic scratching on the rock,
as if grains of rice were there ? And so it was with me.
The old inclinations refused to leave my mind (such as
the inclination still to search in Hinduism for what was
not there) ; and the sinful habits in which I had so long
THE FORM OF LISTENING 97
indulged continued in unabated force. I therefore came
to the conclusion that since association with Christians
and the reading of their Book disturbed my mind, my
best course was to cut clear of both ; and accordingly I
desisted entirely from such conversation and reading.
If any Christian accosted me, I gave no room for con-
versation. Only when the missionary spoke did I go
through the form of listening ; but it was with a deaf
ear. Some time so passed. Hard was my heart and
dead."
With a few graphic words he closes this part of his
story, telling in terse Tamil poetry how he " beat, bruised,
and slew, slew, ay and buried," the living voice within
him, which slain, still lived and spoke of Him who as
yet had no form or comeliness to him, no beauty that
he should desire Him.
CHAPTER XIV
"With His Stripes we are healed"
ABOUT this time his "Hindu soul" was stirred to
its depths, and lashed into wrath, by the con-
version of several of his friends. The first one
to cross the line, and break for ever with life as it had
been, was a fellow-Pandit, who as a fellow-student in old
days had been " a fast heart-friend." This was grief un-
speakable. And worse followed; for shortly afterwards
his own younger brother, together with two other friends,
confessed themselves Christians, and were baptized.
" It would be impossible to describe all that followed
this," he writes : " the tumults which arose ; the insults
which the missionaries had to endure; the anguish
which filled the hearts of the parents and relations of
the newly baptized. No English mind can grasp the
extent of the grief which my mother and I experienced
on account of my brother's conversion. However much
I might say or write about it, it would still remain
utterly beyond the ken of foreigners, and might only
seem to them grotesque, extraordinary. I do not charge
them with want of sympathy. I only say that it lies
beyond the bounds of their experience.
" One of the two who had just been baptized had been
HEART-SORE 99
for years my bosom friend. Though he was younger
than myself my miud rejoiced to regard his word as the
word of a very guru, because of the ripeness of his
knowledge, keenness of intellect, and nobility of char-
acter and life." All that was over now. In that
hour of shock it seemed as if the friend dishonoured
and defiled could be a friend no longer. The pain was
poignant.
Between the brothers there was the same misery of
estrangement. They had been united in a closeness of
intimacy rare in the West : now seas divided them.
And the mother, devoted as the Indian mother is with
a devotion the more intense because the less diffused,
had to see the son who was ever as the nursling to her
heart, pass into another world with which hers held no
communion. Night after night she wailed the death
wail for him. To her love, to her care, he was dead.
And then while the wound was still too new to
bear even the tenderest touch, the missionary touched
it, by mistake. " Your brother has become a Chris-
tian, has he not ? What is there now to hinder
you ? " This was to the Pandit. What was there to
hinder ? Only his mother's completed desolation, his
young wife's woe. Was not the home stricken hard
enough already ? Stung to the quick the Pandit
answered haughtily, left the room indignantly, and im-
mediately sent in his resignation. The missionary
recognised his mistake, would not accept the resigna-
tion, tried to explain where he could not console. But
though he persuaded his Pandit to stay, and strove to
show him he truly cared, he could not undo the effect of
100 "WITH His STRIPES WE ARE HEALED"
those words, and one can understand how the two must
have drifted apart.
It all happened years ago. Pandit and pupil have
long been together in the land where forgiveness means
forgetting. But the incident speaks to us of to-day.
There are times when we can best help a soul through
silence, not speech.
After a time the young Pandit and his special friend
drew together, in spite of their divergence of views, and
the friend understanding him could help him. He lent
him The Pilgrim's Progress to read ; the book became
alluring to him, took hold of him, became at once his
possession and possessor. In after years he translated
or adapted it so finely in Tamil verse, that it has become
the greatest of our Christian classics, judged from a
higher Tamil point of view. " I have poured my life
into that book," he said once. " My heart's deepest is
in it." But that was later.
" My friend impressed it strongly upon me," the story
continues, "that it was absolutely essential for me to
forsake all known sin, otherwise it would be useless for
me to read religious books, or indeed anything else. I
acted upon his advice. I endeavoured to put away
everything which I knew to be wrong in my life. Some
glaring sins, my conscience being witness, I entirely
forsook. Nevertheless, though an outward reformation
took place to some extent, there was no inward cleansing
from sin, neither was my mind constant and steadfast.
" When I met my friend later he told me to read the
Gospel history in order, and to ask God to open my
spirit-eyes. He taught me, too, how I should pray, and
"ALL'S LOVE YET ALL'S LAW" 101
I set to work to follow his instructions. But though I
came in this way to understand clearly the doctrines of
the Saviour's holy incarnation, I was all in a haze of
confusion as to how His atonement could bring salvation
to man."
I have hesitated about copying out the next para-
graph : the wonderful way of salvation is so familiar to
the reader. But it may be, one will read this page
whose feet have not yet trodden that path, and perhaps
the old scholar's description of what was to him such
unfamiliar ground may be like a light from the East,
falling upon it, making the steps show clearer.
" One day, when that soul-friend and I were alone
together, I told him all about my doubts and bewilder-
ment, and asked him questions on the subject. He
therefore explained to me how the Lord Christ, the Son
of God, had become the Mediator between the holy God
and sinful men, who had broken God's law, and were in
sin's dark prison. He showed me how He, the Christ,
had become Surety for men, and was incarnate as the
Reconciler (the One who makes smooth the unevenness
between justice and mercy) ; how He had kept the law
for men, being pure in mind, word, deed ; that is, pure
in His whole nature. For we Hindus regard the
essentials of being as threefold : there is the mind,
source of thought ; the tongue, which forms words,
expression of thought ; the body, producing action,
thought made visible. Viewed from all points He was
pure. My friend further showed me how the Lord had
wrought out spotless righteousness, and had taken upon
Himself all the sins of all mankind, with all the punish-
102 "WiTH His STRIPES WE ARE HEALED"
ment due to them ; and how He had endured untold
agony of soul and body on the cross, shedding His
blood, and yielding up His life as a sacrifice for sin, and
so providing for us most perfect merit. He went on to
describe how He had risen victorious from the dead, and
so finally procured eternal life for countless souls ; and
how He had ascended to Heaven, and taken up His
glorious session on the right hand of the Father, there to
intercede and bestow salvation on all believers. He
explained, moreover, that since Christ was universal Lord,
the salvation which He had purchased was available for
all mankind, and that whosoever sincerely, with real con-
trition and repentance, believes that Christ alone is the
Sin-Destroyer, the World-Saviour, and that He bore and
put away his punishment, — is justified ; and to him is
imparted Christ's perfect merit. 'This is salvation,'
said my friend. ' The one so saved is a liberated soul.' "
Then followed the new-old miracle. " The Spirit of
God sent home this truth to my heart then and there.
That very day I knew the Lord Christ. That very day
I learned to pray in His name. That very day the sins
which had seemed sweet to me before became bitterness
itself. That very day I resolved to be a Christian."
And that very day he who was to be known wherever
the Tamil tongue is known as the Christian poet, sang
his first song to the glory of the " Glorious Sea of Grace,
bright Sun of Love, whose radiance makes the darkness
flee." Thought on thought and word on word came
running up, eager to tell what cannot be told of the
light like the light of the morning when the sun rises,
of the fairness like the fairness of the green tender
"SEE THE CHRIST STAND" 103
grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after
rain, of the skyful of stars which all were suns that had
suddenly opened above him. And he longed for power
to express to his people the beauty and dearness of Christ
Jesus his Eedeemer, by whose stripes he was healed.
CHAPTER XV
"He shall see of the Travail of His Soul"
HOW shall I tell what happened?" he writes,
looking back on that illuminated day. " God
opened my heart, and I opened my lips to
praise Him for His love." Simply told, is it not ?
" God opened my heart : I opened my lips." Life
henceforth was to be for him full of that opening of
the lips which fills other lips with song.
But not quite yet. " Now, though none of my family
knew of my change, they began to grow suspicious about
me, because I discontinued my former religious observ-
ances ; and they asked questions about it. I put them
off with evasive answers. I used to pray on my mat,
after all had retired. Sometimes my wife would come
unexpectedly and ask me some question, and my silence
increased her suspicions. I soon got tired of conceal-
ments, and calling her alone one day, I said a few words
gently about Christianity. She at once began to cry
and make a great noise, threatening to take her life.
" When I came to the decision to become a Christian,
we had three little daughters under five years of age.
My chief anxiety was lest, by becoming an open Christian,
I should plunge my family in great grief and confusion ;
104
" RESTLESSLY AT REST" 105
and though my decision was not weakened by this, I had
not the boldness to shake myself free from my fear, and
take the open step. And so it came to pass that I spent
some time like a man fast bound in prison."
This will seem incredible to some. Had he not known
the Lord Christ ? To others it will seem only natural,
indeed right. His mother had been already sorely stricken
by her other son's defection ; how could he raise his hand
to strike her again ? His wife trusted him ; how could
he wrong her trust ? His relations, though not dependent
upon him, were connected by closest ties of affection ;
uncles and aunts who had known him from childhood,
cousins innumerable. In England families subdivide :
in India they hold together. How could he, as he said,
plunge all these people, who loved him, and whom he
loved, into " great grief and confusion." He could not
wreck the home : all that was good in him rose and
protested. So he did certain compromising things, and
instead of the sword, there was peace. How could he
do otherwise ? someone asks with sympathy. " Things
that appeared undoubted sins wear little crowns of light "
(if we may misquote in thought), when we looJ: at them
from the human side, and sympathise first, with each
other, and second, with God. " For the bravest sin that
ere was praised, the King Eternal wore a crown of
thorns " : that is how the matter looks from the other
side. He realised this at last.
Then came the inevitable agony. Would God it need
not be ! To smooth it over a friend suggested that if
he went quietly to Madras, then farther from his home
than India is from England as regards journey-time, it
106 " HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OF HlS SOUL "
would be easier to confess Christ openly, and to persuade
his wife to join him. Easier in every way, because the
family would be among strangers, and not their own
caste people. And so it was arranged. He left his
wife and children with his mother, went to Madras,
got work as Pandit, and wrote for his family to come
and join him. Not knowing all, they consented; but,
just as they were about to start, some one gave the
alarm, — some "meddlesome old woman," he writes dis-
gustedly,— and they refused to come. A month after-
wards, when the news reached him, he felt he could
delay no longer. He and two other young caste men
from his own country, who also wanted to be Christians,
clubbed together, went to church together, studied the
Bible together, and finally decided to be baptized together.
His heart went out to them in clinging affection.
But spies were on the track. They had thought them-
selves unnoticed in the great city ; but the Caste con-
federation has eyes everywhere, they had been under
observation all the time. It was reported that they
consorted with Christians, ceased wearing Vishnu's marks,
and were cooking for themselves, because their Hindu
cook considered them reprobate. This brought two of
the fathers in hot haste to Madras. Both sons yielded.
The third had no father to come ; the month's journey
was too much for the frail old mother, so he was left
unmolested, and he went quietly on.
There were crowds in the great city, but none of his
own. It was an empty city to him. Most of us have
known such times, when the sudden ceasing of some
voice makes a silence that "aches round" us "like a
STEADIED 107
strong disease, and new." His was the poet nature,
sensitive to suffering as to happiness. Behind him lay
his home, and all good memories ; before him the
heaped-up pain of hurting further those whom he most
dearly loved; and around him, closing heavily, the
silence.
It was the most difficult time in his life. He was
helped through it by a young missionary to whom he
was teaching Tamil. " She talked to me most feelingly
about the Saviour, and steadied me in Christ. The
work I did for her was little ; the work she did for me
was much."
He saw his two friends occasionally, but most of his
time was spent alone, and as he had no one to talk to
he talked the more to his Lord. Conversations alone
with Christ are wonderfully strengthening. Soon he
felt himself urged with an inward urging to burn the
bridge behind. He was baptized.
From this time onwards he was in truth a man in
love with our Lord Jesus Christ. It pleased the Lord
so to " line his heart with the love of his Lord Jesus,"
that in the years when we knew him he could not speak
of Him without a kindling of expression and a fervour
that recalled Samuel Rutherford, Ter Steegen, and Tauler.
The same spirit burned in him, the warm love that is
not afraid of being too warm. The Love that would not
let him go, but followed and found and won him, had
won him now to an abandonment of love that broke out
in rivers of love songs. Oh, for more and more of that
love ! " Oh, that He would strike out windows, and fair
and great lights in this old house, this fallen-down soul,
108 " HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OF HlS SOUL "
and then set the soul near-hand Christ, that the rays and
beams of light and the soul-delighting glances of the
fair, fair Godhead might shine in at the windows and
fill the house ! A fairer, and more near and direct sight
of Christ would make room for His love ; for we are
but pinched and straitened in His love. Alas, it were
easy to measure and weigh all the love that we have for
Christ by inches and ounces. Alas, that we should love
by measure and weight, and not rather have floods and
feasts of Christ's love ! Oh, that Christ would break
down the old narrow vessels of these narrow and ebb
souls, and make fair, deep, wide, and broad souls, to hold
a sea and a full tide (flowing over all its banks) of
Christ's love!"
And now one idea informed his life — the passion of the
soul-winner was like a fire within him. He must return
to his own house, and win his wife and mother. He left
Madras, travelled southwards, eager, expectant, longing
to see his dear ones again, and to tell them all. They
received him with tears, with coldness, with bitter
reproaches, and the turning away of the faces he loved.
" 0 Cross, that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee ;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be."
"My mother's agony was boundless. It would be
impossible to describe it. I know not the words."
Things soften as we look back at them through the
mist of many years. This thing, this pain, stands out
unblurred in the sharpness of its outline, a cruel thing
"THRONGING THROUGH" 109
and a bitter. The days that followed were like so many
jagged-edged saws, sawing away relentlessly at the very
nerves of his being. It is easy to be brave when our
hearts are whole and well, but when they are cut and
hurt, and strained all out of shape, then it is hard.
" Strive to throng through the thorns of this life to
be with Christ." By God's grace he thronged through,
but for eighteen months it was a daily thronging through.
His wife left him. He had two young children to
see to. None of his womenfolk would help him. His
old friends despised him. His people would have none
of him.
After a while his mother relented, and helped him a
little with the children. And the brother did what he
could. But until his own wife came back to him he was
desolate on the human side, though comforted as such
must be : for " only heaven is better than to walk with
Christ at midnight over moonless seas."
He had kept the two little children in the hope that
they would draw their mother back. She, widowed,
according to Hindu feeling, held aloof in loneliness
only second to his. But it was as he had hoped. She
returned to the town, though not at first to her home.
The children were sent to see her. After long waiting
she was willing to return to her polluted home, for the
sake of the mother - love that could not rest away.
And he taught her patiently till at last she too found
Christ.
After a time his old mother gave in, and several other
members of his family were converted. He was greatly
used in winning intelligent Hindus, men not easily
110 "HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OP HlS SOUL '
satisfied. He became known as the " Catcher of Men."
No one since his time has exerted quite such an
influence among young students and thinkers and caste-
bound orthodox Hindus. It was not only his scholar-
ship which all acknowledged and respected, it was his
character. The Hindus studied him through the years
of his outwardly uneventful life, and they recognised the
man for what he was. So old age came quietly on,
and then, as we have told it :
" To the light more clear than noon,
Passed a soul that grew to music
Till it was with God in tune."
A Tamil manuscript has been sent to us by a lawyer,
one of our leading Christians. He tells his story, as our
poet told his, to the glory of God's grace. He went to
study, he says, in the Christian school where the poet
was Professor of Tamil. He had come from his Hindu
home, and was full of prejudice against Christians. His
mother had feared to let him go among Christians lest
they would inject mind-deluding medicine into a plantain
and persuade him to eat it, or otherwise tamper with
him and beguile him. So, fortified by warnings, and
inclined himself to be on guard, he approached Chris-
tianity cautiously. He boarded with his Tamil professor,
for caste reasons. He studied him with a boy's keen
eyes : " I never heard him tell a lie, never saw him
confuse truth ; in his God there must be a holy power,"
was his conclusion. That boy became a man noted for
integrity of life. It will not be known till eternity
shows up the secrets of time, how much our Church
GOD KEEPS THE COUNT 111
owes to this one life, influenced at its source by that
dear friend, who, while he influenced, never knew that
he was doing anything.
One of the first Tamil scholars I knew was a keen
teacher, whose lessons were valued by all of us. He
taught me in his holiday time, and when I asked about
the fee (for the hours were worth rupees to him), he
would not hear of pay. " No," he said, and stuck to it,
" it is the way by which I can help you to get quickly
to my people." This man was won by the poet, led by
him, as he told us, " to the Lotus feet of the Lover of
souls."
Two out of many — God keeps the count — are enough
to prove the poet did not live in vain. The Gospel
which made him what he was, has not come here in vain.
Nor have we come in vain if we may have fellowship
with our Lord in His joy, when He sees of the travail of
His soul even here, in a sorrowful land, where so often
He has grief.
Part of the most enduring work our poet did was
literary. He has left books which we can give to the
most critical Hindu, knowing that so far as the choice
of language is concerned it will not repel him, but appeal
to the finer part of him, and put the message before him
intelligently and winningly. Not long ago a Christian
schoolmaster was travelling by train in the same com-
partment as a Brahman. He asked the Brahman if he
had ever heard of Christianity. For answer the Brahman
retired to the farther end of the carriage. The Christian
waited, then asked, " Do you care for poetry ? " If there
is one word which charms and draws a cultured Hindu
112 "HE SHALL SEE OF THE TRAVAIL OF HlS SOUL "
it is the word poetry. The Brahman's eyes glistened.
The Christian began to chant stanzas from our poet's
Pilgrim's Progress. The poem follows Indian rules of
art ; to the trained ear the fall of its cadence is quite
perfect. The Brahman listened, won to listen at first
by the beauty of the poem. Sin, redemption, Christ's
life and death, clear teaching about the way of salvation,
outpourings of love and devotion, — still the Brahman
listened. At last, after long chanting, broken by words
of explanation here and there, the Christian stopped.
" That is Christianity," he said. The Brahman was
disarmed. For the first time he had listened to "the
wooing note."
But looking back, as we do now, to the memory of
our poet, we think of him most as our friend. The
scholar lives by the work he did ; the friend lives on in
our hearts. The wise may talk of East and West, and
how neither can ever meet or merge, because there will
always be something between. In Christ there is no
East and West ; His love fuses the two into one. That
old man was one of us ; we were as one of his own to
him. And when we meet in our real Home, where East
and West are unspoken words, and all earth's divisions
forgotten, he will welcome us as a father would welcome
the children remembered name by name, parted from
him for a little while.
CHAPTER XVI
" Not Peace, but a Sword "
THE two companions who were turned back watched
their friend from a distance when he was baptized.
One of the two continued for many years more or
less in sympathy ; but he gradually drifted. The other
was " caught in the delusive whirlpool of the Ve'dantic
philosophy," and became a bitter foe. Not long ago a
young student from this district, studying in Madras,
was convinced of the truth of Christianity. He grew
more and more earnest, till he was considered ripe for
baptism. His father, upon hearing this, went straight to
Madras. He kept his son with him for a few hours,
then returned him to the missionary, broken. Sense of
honour, will-power, all desire, had gone. No one knows
what he did with the boy. He returned to Tinnevelly,
satisfied. This father was the poet's friend. He
and his son have dropped out of sight : we know no
more of them. Those things, never the mere physical
accidents of life, are the missionary's hurts and heart-
breaks. The cause is found in one word — caste.
There is a growing idea at home, caused by that
perilous habit of generalising from an isolated incident,
that caste is losing its power of grip. Where surface
114 "NoT PEACE, BUT A SWORD"
relations are concerned it is true that its vigilance is
relaxed. Education and all civilising agencies tend to-
wards this. But go deeper, and you find caste is still a
forceful thing, and individual conversion, where it rules,
still means the knife at the heart.
A South Indian Christian paper, edited by a convert
from the central citadel of Hinduism, lately addressed a
series of questions bearing upon this subject to men of
experience, Indian and English, in different parts of the
country. From north to south the answers were remark-
ably similar. The consensus of opinion may be fairly
summarised by two answers to one of the questions :
" In order for a Christian to retain his caste, is it
necessary that he should in any way take part in the
worship of idols, demons, or false gods ? "
" Generally speaking, it is obligatory for a Hindu to
worship idols in order to retain caste." — Hon. Kanwar
Sir Harnam Singh, K.C.S.I., Ahluwalia.
" A Hindu might, by doing nothing, retain his caste, at
least for a considerable length of time ; but if he moved
in a distinctly Christian direction he would lose caste." —
Archdeacon Caley, Travancore.
A second question was : " A Hindu becomes a Chris-
tian, and is baptized. He claims that he can live a
Christian life in his orthodox Hindu home. In your
opinion is it practicable ? Is it even possible ? "
The answers, English and Indian, were decisive :
" A baptized Christian might very well live a Christian
life in a Hindu home if he were given freedom to do so.
THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES 115
But in this part of India the attempt would not be
tolerated. If he attempted it, he would either be ex-
pelled or speedily made away with." — Kev. Edward P.
Rice, L.M.S., Bangalore.
" No ; the mere act of baptism is looked upon by the
Hindu as putting a man out of caste. A baptized man is
considered as having gone out of the Hindu fold." — L. C.
Williams Pillai, Inspector of Schools, Northern Circars.
" He cannot live a consistent Christian life." — Mr. P.
Krishna Murti, Vizagapatam.
" Xo Hindu will ever be allowed to lead a consistent
Christian life." — Gangaram Pantulu, B.A., Sub-Registrar,
Bimlipatam.
" No, he will be outcasted. Theoretically, he can, but
no one has yet succeeded in the attempt." — Dr. Ramachan-
drayya, M.D., L.R., C.I.E., etc., Madras.
'• It is impossible to live in Hindu homes as a consistent
Christian. From a Hindu standpoint such persons as
lead a consistent Christian life in their Hindu homes
would be surely outcasted." — J. Vekanna, B.A., Head
Master, High School, Bimlipatam.
" If anything is impossible under the sun, it is this." —
Mr. J. M. Bhaktul, Head Master, High School, Chatrapur.
The position was fairly stated in a critique on The
Advanced Text-Book of Hindu Religion and Ethics : "It
appears to me that most Hindus are prepared to be
tolerant when principles are merely being discussed. But
when it is a matter of leaving a false position to take
116 "NoT PEACE, BUT A SWORD"
up one rationally conceived and spiritually desired, to
leave Hinduism for Christianity, we can no longer expect
an indifferent toleration. Neo-Hinduism is ready enough
to make a cheap identification of our religion with its
own, and to hail Jesus Christ as an Eastern Muni and a
Yogi of great powers ; but the truth of its heart comes
out when a Hindu claims to exercise his right of indi-
vidual freedom, and to follow that Christ in the way He
has ordained."
These extracts form a platform ; the people in our
story move up and down upon it.
After the disturbance which followed Victory's con-
version several lads who seemed genuine in desire to
become Christians came forward as inquirers. One of
these was a young man who had been influenced at
school. His relatives knew of it, and arranged a marriage
for him with a speed which betrayed their alarm. His
distress at the thought of causing them distress increased
as the day drew nearer. His mother's beseeching face,
his father's stern silence, weighed upon him till his very
walk showed it. He stooped like an old man.
The day was fixed. The house was adorned. Strings
of jessamine fastened from roof to roof and pillar to
pillar filled the air with heavy scent. And the boy was
entangled as if the strings had been wound about his
soul, and dazed as if their scent possessed some fatal
miasma.
On the evening before the wedding night we felt
impelled to go to the house and try to see him.
When we arrived there it was dusk, and the court-
yard, lighted with many lamps, was oppressively hot.
IRRESOLUTE 117
Servants were rushing about, friends were shouting
directions. Children were playing in the midst of the
confusion. Overhead, the red and white strips of the
awning were interlaced with flowers withered already.
Piles of flower balls lay in every available corner. All
the lamps were smoking ; not a breath of pure air could
get in. One half wondered then, as one waited in that
suffocating atmosphere, how anything could survive in it.
If will-power withered with the flowers, who could
wonder ?
No one took any notice of us ; we were lost in the
crowd. After we had waited awhile the bridegroom-
elect walked in, and we went out together into the cool,
clear air.
It was impossible to talk in the street. We went
straight to the bungalow ; the boy followed. The people
were kept from thinking about us.
Then for an hour Mr. Walker talked with him, while
Mrs. Walker and we other workers waited on God in
the next room. It was given to us in that hour to feel
something of the value, the immeasurable value of a
single soul.
The sound of voices ceased. There was a long silence.
Then the door opened ; we heard the boy go. He had
gone back irresolute.
An irresolute boy among resolute men and women
has a poor chance. A few hours later the preliminary
noises attending a wedding of importance told us he had
yielded.
But what if he had not ? One stops at a loss for
words to show what one can almost see : the devastation,
118 "NoT PEACE, BUT A SWORD"
distress, disgrace ; the immediate cessation of the marriage
ceremonies ; the indignation of the bride's relatives at
what they would regard as an insupportable insult.
Above all there would be the grief and horror of the
parents; the bitter, uncontrollable frenzied excitemeDt
of every one of the several hundred relations, and the
scorn of the few thousand neighbours who made up that
boy's world. It is not needful to speak of physical
dangers and possible cruelties, because he might escape
these by flight. We only mention unavoidable cer-
tainties.
The thought of it all unnerved the boy. The word
was not spoken that night or next day. So the follow-
ing night the conch shell's blare and the tomtom's
beat insisted persistently, wearily, that his soul was en-
tangled indeed ; the seductive influence had worked.
We saw him a few months later. The schoolboy
carelessness had passed. He looked helpless and miser-
able. In the South all social ceremonies are connected
with idolatry through the medium of caste customs,
which have religious meanings. So the marriage had in-
volved compromise. He was a hypocrite, and he knew it.
Day by day in fulfilling his duties he found himself
more and more embarrassed. As a boy his conduct had
not been much observed. As a man he must perform
the rites pertaining to the husband. Direct idolatry
might be evaded for a while, but the trident painted
every morning freshly on his forehead related to Vishnu.
He called it his caste mark, in feeble palliation, but
names do not alter facts. He felt like a snared animal
struggling in his snare.
ENTANGLED 119
Gradually this feeling passed, and gave place to
inertia. He cared for nothing, would not let his little
wife learn, went through idolatrous routine untroubled.
Sometimes he came to the bungalow in a shamefaced,
shuffling sort of fashion. But this ceased after a year
or so. A coma settles upon the soul that however
sorely pressed disobeys, and goes on disobeying.
Most missionaries could duplicate this story. It is
such a common story, it seems superfluous to tell it.
But we have told it because it is so common. If it
were sporadic it would not be worth telling.
CHAPTER XVII
"At Variance"
OUE Lord said, " Not peace, but a sword ; for I am
come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother." Do you
feel that there must be something wrong if loyalty to
Christ collides with " loyalty to God's first law of human
order, obedience in the home " ? Something wrong in the
missionary's presentation of the Gospel when its accept-
ance produces such collision ? Surely there is something
wrong, something wholly out of course, a discord in
the harmony which sounds through all the keys. But
is the discord in the music, or in our rendering of it ?
" If thy friend which is as thine own soul entice thee
secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods . . .
thou shalt not consent unto him." This chord of the
seventh perplexes us, but what if the music were incom-
plete without it ? Resolve it properly, and you find the
chord which follows explains it ; your ear is satisfied.
Dare we leave the arresting note unstruck when we see
it written in the manuscript ? The refusal, however
gentle, to " consent " comes into direct collision — must in
the nature of things, if you are a Hindu — with the will
of father, mother, friend who is as your own soul.
120
"I WISH IT WERE NOT WRONG" 121
While the power of Hinduism remains unbroken, there
must often be the sense of a false note somewhere, as
if the instrument called life were out of tune.
Lotus became illuminated by hearing that God's light
shone for her. So few things shone for her. I realised
how few when one day, while we were with her, the
sound of a tambourine and a fiddle out in the street made
her eyes dance. It was the men's Itinerating Band
which had come to her village, and was gathering a
congregation by singing in the street. " Oh, if I could
only see them ! " cried Lotus ; and flinging widows' rules
to the winds, she ran out into the courtyard with the
eagerness of a child, and looked over the wall, and for
three blissful minutes drank in joy. " But it was so
wrong of me ! " and poor Lotus hid her face ashamed,
as, startled at her audacity, she crouched in the darkest
corner of the dark little room. " I forgot I ought never
to have looked. But oh, I did want so much to see !
I wish it were not wrong."
Five years of repression of every natural instinct had
not quenched the love of life in her. The human within
us is a strange, strong thing. Compress it, it eludes you,
and escapes you, and disappears, to reappear as it was
made at first. Lotus had been fashioned for delight. A
small mud-walled courtyard, two small windowless rooms,
no outlook, nothing but a strip of ground about two
yards long behind, is it much to serve for all your
world ? Lotus at seventeen is hot with life. Sometimes
the low laugh breaks bounds, and ripples out, but always
it is quickly checked, for Lotus is a widow.
She never really was a wife. Looking back, it is
122 "AT VARIANCE"
confused. Crimson silk raiment edged with gold, num-
bers of new and glorious jewels, flowers round her neck
and in her hair — the scent of jessamine brings it all back
— cakes, delicious unlimited cakes ; rides in a decorated
car, with some one sitting opposite and little children at
her knee, while men in front blew conch-shells, and men
behind clanged cymbals, and all the delightful abandon
of noise made a sea of sound about her. And in the
evening many lights, and the subtle perfume of sandal-
wood, and the flower-ball game, while musicians twanged
and sang their never-ending song, and otto of roses was
sprinkled about, and everyone laughed and was glad.
Then suddenly a thunderclap, a darkening down of
everything, for she had become a widow. And the
childish heart was frightened at first, for everyone
looked at her and cried ; and then, when they snatched
her silks away, and tore off her jewels, all but two,
spared in a moment of pity, — then she became rebellious.
But they told her it was just her fate. Who fights fate ?
Be quiet, they said. And they gave her poorer food, as
a punishment, she thought, which hurt her sore little
heart the more, for she had not meant to do anything
wrong ; and she felt misunderstood. So all life's play
passed far from her, and all life's sunshine too.
Three years afterwards we saw her for the first time,
and told her about the sunshine stored up for her. At
first it seemed too good to be true. But when at last
she understood, her heart lost all its restlessness. The
light brings peace.
Then, as it will, the light shone out on any within
reach. The first to feel it was Brilliance, her cousin,
"LET GOD'S IDEA GROW" 123
a childless and much despised young wife, who, though
naturally bright, has become depressed and soured ; for
her life is dominated by a tyrannical mother-in-law, who
considers Brilliance a failure and hardly worth her rice.
Brilliance certainly is sulky, but we felt that what
would sweeten her was just what had lighted Lotus' life,
and this was denied her. " What has she to do with
reading ? " said the mother-in-law. Lotus quietly shone
on her then, told her stories about Jesus, interested her
in Him, got her to believe He loved her, though her
mother-in-law did not. For a while she was unhindered
in this gentle ministry.
Timidly, greatly fearing repulse, the light began to
shine further. Not that Lotus could take it anywhere.
The only place where she can shine is just the one place
where she is, a room about eight feet square. But
sometimes aunts and cousins come, and she does not hide
her light.
One of those aunts is our friend, a motherly-hearted
woman. One of our boys was very ill. We wanted a
special herb to make medicine for him. It was not to
be bought, but she had it, and hearing how we needed
it, she sent it to us, refusing payment, " for friendship's
sake," she said. There was a time when she was
touched ; she saw the beauty of our Lord, and was
attracted by it. But her desire to know Him did not go
deep enough. " I am a believing one," she says, " like
Lotus," and sitting on her mat, with her dear little
daughter beside her, just as she sits in the photo, she
is fond of arguing at length that to be an inwardly
believing one is quite enough. " You see no idol marks
124 "AT VARIANCE"
on my forehead. I never do anything idolatrous. Every
morning I pray ' Have mercy on me, 0 Jesus Lord !
make my way prosperous.' What more could He
require of me ? "
But one evening alone in the moonlight, the choice of
her heart was made manifest. It was the night of the
street fire festival. Each householder worshipped apart.
She stood outside her gate with the wood for making
the fire in her hand, and offerings for sacrifice. She
knew it was all vain ; but if she refused, her caste would
hear of it; she would lose her acknowledged position,
and be looked upon askance. So she stood there in the
moonlight, no firelight yet with its earth red came into
conflict with that white light. And she weighed in
the balance Christ and caste. Then she stooped and
lighted the fire.
And as it blazed she turned and saw we were standing
close to her. She started ; she had not expected to see
us there. We usually leave the place earlier ; but the
long streets with their rows of fires had been full of
detaining things, for the inagic of the East comes out in
festival times at night.
The lane where her house stands is off the street.
Hers was the only fire in it. And the palm behind
rose black like a plume, and the archway under it
framed the fire, and the moonlight filtered through the
palm and tried to put the firelight out.
We stood there silent for a while. The woman
was bending over the fire, her face was working.
We could see it by the flame. Then it set. " I
have chosen," she said ; " a thousand words — what
"THE LIVE PAIN BURNETH LIKE A LAMP" 125
will they do ? " But it was not the time for a thousand
words.
After this it was more difficult for Lotus ; but still,
while any would listen, she spoke, till her liberty passed
as life's play had passed, very suddenly.
An idolatrous rite was in progress. Lotus refused to
take part in it. She had often talked to her mother and
father, but they had taken no notice. Now it seemed
to dawn upon them that this " Jesus doctrine talk " was
more than talk, and they shut her up in a small back
room, and locked the door.
Once we had asked her whether, beloved as she is by
her parents, it would be possible for her to be baptized
and live at home as a Christian. There is a deep
square well at the end of the street where her home is.
She pointed out in the well's direction : " My parents
would rather see me under water, dead, than a Christian."
Then her brown eyes filled with trouble : " It is not only
that ; it would grieve my mother. Because I am a
widow she never goes out of the courtyard except before
daylight and after dark. But she never taunts me ;
she loves me. Her love holds me back from grieving
her."
For weeks after that open confession we saw nothing
of Lotus, and heard nothing of her. Then one evening
two of us were allowed in for a minute. Poor weary
Lotus ; she was sitting in the back, looking out. She
had been allowed to sow a few seeds in the strip of
ground, and she called it her garden, and found pleasure
in it. Her Bible had been taken from her. She was
not allowed to kneel in prayer, — not that it mattered, her
126 "AT VARIANCE"
soul could kneel, — and she was forbidden ever to speak
of Christ. Her mother's love had " turned sour." Her
father was ashamed of her. Her relations constantly
upbraided her. Her widowhood, they reminded her, was
sufficient disgrace for the family, without any added
affront. Was she the only one going to heaven ? Her
pride, they said, was most astonishing, and in a childless
widow peculiarly revolting. There was only time to say
a few words of sympathy and encouragement, and to urge
her to look up through all, and show love through all.
And then the mother called, and we had to hasten away.
There was a season of friendliness after this. We
were allowed to visit her. But we were always shadowed
by some member of the family, and no Bible-reading was
allowed. This small indulgence, however, touched her
very much. " My parents love me, they do love me,"
she whispered once, when for a moment the watchful-
ness was relaxed. " Oh, it is hard to grieve them. It
is like treading on my own mother's heart."
The parents are pleasant people. We had a long talk
with them one day. They told us Lotus had pined like
a flower deprived of air and light when they shut her up
and refused to let us visit her. They did not like to see
her so cast down, and they had risked the scorn of the
street by letting us see her again. Would we not on
our side be thoughtful for them ? If our influence led
to her breaking caste, she must be confined to that one
small room till she is old and wise. Let her follow her
own customs and bring no dishonour on the caste.
Then all would be well. We felt our position acutely.
The parents' unusual frankness naturally made it all the
ONE CANNOT ENDURE IF ONE DOES NOT SEE 127
harder for us to keep true to the one object for which,
as Christ's messengers, we were there. We explained to
them how the matter stood, pleaded with them to let
Lotus obey her conscience, and follow her Master. But
in vain.
" God bless the missionaries ; give them souls," you
pray : God hears your prayer, and gives us souls. Then,
if we are working among those for whom following Christ
means, as it meant in earlier days, Variance, there must
be the burning of the fire which our Lord saw already
kindled.
" Amma," said Victory who had visited Lotus with
us, " it brings all my own sorrow back." Then she told
us that what held her through was the verse given her
before she came out : " ' He endured as seeing Him who
is invisible.' One cannot endure if one does not see.
That strong verse rested me."
Her words brought back the past. We remember
how there was storm all about. The greyhaired mother
lay on the floor and beat her head on her child's feet,
then caught them in her hands, " 0 queen ! My jewel !
My mother ! " she cried, using India's last love word as
she broke into love's lamentation. Then as her child
tried to raise her and kiss her, a sudden fury seized her.
" Defiled ! Defiled ! " she screamed enraged, " would you
stab me with your mouth ? Ay, stab here ! stab here ! "
and she tore her garment from her breast — " here where
your head lay, my baby — stab here ! " For seventeen
years they had slept on one mat, mother and child
together. They had shared one pillow, for they were
one. Did a thorn prick the daughter's foot ? it had
128 "Ax VARIANCE"
first pierced the mother's eye. This is a Tamil description
of their love for one another. Now that daughter had
to choose through all her pain : should she stab that
mother's heart with her mouth, or drive another nail
into the Hand that bore while it beckoned her ? 0 God,
when shall the need for such choice utterly cease ? Can
the world show anywhere a harder thing than this ?
Are all who pray prepared for it ? It would seem that
some are not. Perhaps this is natural. Would we ever
rejoice in a victory won if we clearly saw the battlefield,
where the wounded cry when the slaughter is made ?
We honour the martyrs of course, and count their
age glorious. But then we forget what it meant to
burn.
Sometimes, not content with the negative chill of
silence, friends write disapproving of " such interference
with family life," and suggest a desirable compromise,
and offer prudent counsel. " It is in truth an easy thing
to stand aloof from pain, and lavish exhortation and
advice on one sore vexed by it." But when every nerve
runs sore, for somehow you suffered, you could not help
it, with both sides at once, what you need is different.
Would those who so write, we wonder, have us teach
that commands may change with changing times ? — that
we may follow the Crucified comfortably now — without
His Cross ?
Thank God for the comrades who never are chill.
Their loving heart- warming sympathy reaches these souls
in their great need, and helps them to be patient and
brave. It is such a long patience. Only last week I
saw the mother whose pitiful " Stab here ! Stab here ! "
"NoT ONLY . . . BUT ALSO" 129
had followed her child for nearly seven years. " Amm£,"
I said, longing to comfort her, " you have two dear little
grandchildren now ; and your daughter wants to welcome
you; and your new son will welcome you. There is
room in their home waiting for you. Your two little
grandchildren call." She tore at her scanty grey locks,
and struck herself hard with her thin old hands : " She
whom you name is no daughter of mine. He whom you
name is no son. Grandchildren ? I do not hear them
call ! " And she tore so ruthlessly at her hair that lest
she should tear it all out, we fled.
This story, like the last, is very ordinary. Such is the
atmosphere in which we sing our song. By reason of
the multitude of oppressions the oppressed are made to
cry ; they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty :
God giveth songs in the night. Cry and song inter-
mingle in the hard prose of life as in the Psalms : " 0 iny
God, my soul is cast down within me. ... In the night
His song shall be with me."
These facts call us to prayer. First to prayer of a
national sort for the fall of the systems which create the
conditions. Then to prayer which may be very personal.
There are many like Lotus. They need energy and
grand triumphant faith. They need no less the grace of
a quiet love that never retaliates.
Lastly, and most hardly, we ask any to whom it is
given not only to believe but also to suffer, to pray for
those who are so hindered that they may press on to the
heights of God, though the flints cut sharp and the feet
bleed.
There are times in life when God gives us a choice.
9
130 "Ax VARIANCE"
Two ways open. Both lead homeward. But one is
steeper than the other. The stones cut sharper. It is
far more unknown. There is an impression — this is the
way, and we walk in it. At first it seems a foolish
choice, fruitless of any gain. But afterwards comes the
consciousness that had we chosen otherwise we should
have missed forever the rarest gift of joy. "Where
grows the golden grain ? Where faith ? Where sym-
pathy ? In a furrow cut by pain."
There are those who thus have chosen, not pain for
pain's sake, but the path that had to mean it, drawn by
the passing of One before them up that way. There are
those to whom there is no choice. The upward way
must be the way that hurts the feet. Who can help
them up that way ? Surely only those who themselves
are walking in it. Theirs must be the sympathy that
understands and braces, the faith that cheers like a song.
For heart may faint and questions crowd, " Is the Word
true ? Shall the faith stand ? Is the work worth such
woe as this ? Can the day recompense the night ? "
" Fight on and keep your hearts alive !
I have gone through where ye must go,
I have seen past the agony,
I behold God in heaven and strive."
And Christ walks with you even now while the flints cut
sharp and the feet bleed.
Are such tales too sorrowful to tell ? Should we
suppress the sound of the cry lest it hurt the too
sensitive ear ? But the Sword means this : Variance
means this. It is the existence of this attitude,
this refusal to allow freedom of conscience where the
MORE INVOLVED THAN GATHERING FLOWERS 131
freedom would clash with caste, and the resultant
strain of a drawing in opposite ways where two loves
cannot but be opposite in their constraining, which
cements the stones together in the walls of the Shah
Najaf. Should you not know about it ? You see Christ
crowned, jewels in His diadem, wreaths of victory
heaped about His feet. We see the vision too, and it
inspires us.
But that we may the sooner see it, not by faith
only but in splendid reality, let us follow with more
sympathy all that happens in the deep mine under-
ground, and in the workshop where the jewels must be
chased. And as for the wreaths, let us understand there
is more involved than gathering flowers. " God's choicest
wreaths are always wet with tears."
CHAPTER XVIII
"All These Things"
IT may be that the hindrance to God's working
mightily towards the demolition of the Shah Najaf
is to be found in us. There may be weakness,
compromise, lack of determination to keep the winning
of souls to the front, the use of unconsecrated means,
unsanctified ways of getting money, unconverted workers.
There may be an absence of identification with the people
for whose sake we are here, an unconscious aloofness not
apostolic. Perhaps our love has cooled. Perhaps we
know little of the power of the Holy Ghost, and hardly
expect to see souls saved here and now, and are not
broken down before the Lord because we see so few. God
forgive us and make us far more in earnest, and fill us
more and more with His own burning passion for souls.
Often here, as elsewhere probably, those who respond
to the teaching are those for whom obedience is very
difficult ; while those who are perfectly free to obey, and
who could by their influence do immensely more than
the young girl or lad, care nothing, see nothing in the
Gospel to stir them to inquiry. In India certainly
youth is the time for spiritual decision. But it is
just to the youth of the land that action is so im-
1SJ
IN THE REST-HOUSE 133
possible. Sometimes this contrary aspect of things is
very evident ; a page from itinerating life affords many
illustrations.
We spent a week lately in an outlying town which
has never known a convert. We stayed in the native
rest-house, a small stone building surrounded by a
roughly kept jessamine garden. One small room was
lent to us, the back half of which served as kitchen and
the front as living room. The two halves opened on
each other, after the fashion of a London drawing-room,
only the arch between was not fitted with folding-doors.
We had one door, a huge affair, hung so that you
could see through the cracks between wall and wood.
Sometimes when we were very tired, and yearned for
unobserved repose, we used to shut the door. But there
were those cracks and many holes. So that plan failed.
Then we stuffed cracks and holes with newspaper, which
lasted for a while. But the temptation usually proved
too great to be resisted ; the paper would be poked out,
and an eye fitted carefully to each hole, and a perpen-
dicular row of eyes adjusted to each crack enjoyed the
situation.
We found this one room, double though it was, rather
small and smoky, and asked if we might overflow into
the next. But they told us it belonged to the idol to
whom the rest-house was dedicated, and that as the god
himself dwelt in the next room, we could not. The
third and last room was a kitchen, fitted with enormous
caldrons ; for every afternoon some scores of poor people
were fed there ; so we could not use that room either.
Our coukiug would have desecrated even beggars' rice.
134 "ALL THESE THINGS"
Those days in the rest-house were full of entertain-
ment. To anyone who enjoys new experiences I would say,
go and live behind the scenes for awhile — if you get the
chance — in an Indian rest-house. The manner of hos-
pitality was simple. Each recognised beggar, and any
wayfarer who cared to claim the charity, went up to the
verandah and held out a leaf cup, made of palm leaf
folded and tied with its fibre at each end. The half-
liquid food was ladled into this. Then the recipient re-
tired to a quiet place in the garden, and squatting behind
a bush, if possible, enjoyed the luxury of feeding unob-
served. All sorts and conditions of people spent their
leisurely afternoons in that garden and on the verandah.
Sometimes bejewelled children, looking most unbeggarlike,
would come and carry off food for their relations.
Feeding and being fed seem to be occupations con-
ducive to good temper. There could not have been a
pleasanter community to dwell among. They accepted
us as their guests with guest rights, and never appeared
to feel us in the way. We used to sit together in
the end room in a circle on the floor, after the day's
work was done, while the two elderly men who kept the
place made flower balls and wreaths, and I played with
a pariah pup to their constant wonder and pleasure.
That poor little pup had never been played with before
in his life, and at first could not understand it. But he
soon began to come to me, and lay his skinny little head
in my hand, and wriggle into my lap, and even his
furtive-eyed mother got friendly, and ceased to snarl and
snap. And then when the flower balls and garlands
were finished the men would read aloud from our books,
THE REST-HOUSE SUPERINTENDENT 135
and many an interesting talk we had about Indian affairs,
which led on to talk of the things which are Jesus
Christ's.
One evening I did not go to the end room, but instead
had the Christians who lived near in ours. We were
finishing an informal meeting when I was aware of a
large form looming through the open door, and looking
up saw a tall and very massive gentleman blocking out
the view, while the crowd which had been in possession
retired. I had no chair, only a clean mat, which, how-
ever, I hesitated to offer, as I could not assure him it
had not been used. He reluctantly understood ; the
Indian is polite, he did not want to hurt my feelings ;
but concluding that feelings would recover, he finally
carefully seated himself not on the mat but on the door-
step, the dust of which was less objectionable than that
clean but contaminated mat.
All this time the Christians had been shuffling about
uncomfortably. There was only the one door, so they
could not get out, and they knew their presence there
was an offence. I sat close beside them so as to share
it with them as much as possible. And we all felt a
very humble and despised little company.
But our visitor, Lotus' kinsman, was friendly, and
had come with friendly purpose. He had heard I was
staying at the rest-house, and as he was superintendent
of the charity, he felt interested. He had not been pre-
pared to see the Christians there, and left word that they
must not be admitted again ; but his Oriental gift of
immobility stood him in good stead, and beyond entirely
ignoring them he showed no sign of displeasure. For an
136 "ALL THESE THINGS"
hour or so we talked amicably. It was impossible to get
to anything of moment till he was willing for it. As we
talked, evidence of his influence in many directions
appeared. If only that man became a seeker after
Truth the effect would be far-reaching. Nothing was
further from his thoughts. " I have read part of your
Bible," he said, " but I feel no inward attraction. Our
religion is older by millenniums. It is an all-inclusive
religion. Anything of worth in Christianity will in due
time become, incorporated with Hinduism. Thus we
shall have the best of your religion without forsaking
our own. As you worship Christ, so I worship Krishna.
He satisfies me completely. My sin, by which I mean
the entanglement of sense, is met by his merit. When
I depart this life he will transport me to his heaven."
" I feel no inward attraction " : the soul had grown to
its prison. We thought of Lotus, as he bowed himself
out, free to go where he would. She must stay where
she was ; she might beat herself against the bars till her
heart broke. Who would care ? So long as no bar was
broken, who would care ?
We spent the next morning in the Brahman street.
In each verandah down both sides of the street ancient
Brahmans sat chanting their prayers and adorations, or
in some cases winding from quaint spinning-wheels the
sacred three strand cord.
A cheerful voice greeted us as we passed. It was
the temple musician, an old friend of ours, an artist
in his line. When he plays you seem to see jungles
full of curious creatures making noises to each other ;
rivulets flowing softly, with tree tops interlacing, while
THE CAMERA AT FAULT 137
little birds sing in the cool ; jackal holes in the moun-
tains, " Listen ! don't you hear the beasts yell ? " And
the old man works himself into a frenzy till you almost
imagine you do. And all the time there is the fine
monotonous undertwang of swift thrumming on the
strings, till there breaks through it a call, a cry, and you
are away in the forest with Kama, listening as he mourns
for his beautiful queen Seetha, watching as he searches
through all the wild ways for her, feeling the heart of
things throb, India's heart, kind and good as God made
it and meant it to be.
The old musician had much to tell us of the depravity
of the gentleman who had called to see us the previous
evening, with whom he is not on speaking terms. It
was rather a drop from the tenderness of the music, and
we escaped as soon as we could, and found our way to a
deep verandahed house, where a widow lives who is our
friend.
We made friends with her first over her photograph,1
which, however, proved disappointing. " Why did the
box paint me black ? " and she turned the photo over in
much disgust, for she is not as brown as a walnut, and
the black was a libel. So I promised that when the
Picture-catching Missie Ammal next came to see us the
box would try to do better. And she was consoled.
She told me all her story : she had been betrothed at
five and widowed at seven. As a widow, of course, she
was forbidden to listen to " learning." But she had
managed to pick up an immense amount of information,
and even some English words, which she now wanted to
1 Things as They Are, p. 145.
138 "ALL THESE THINGS"
have explained. She knew pages of Tamil poetry off by
heart, and chanted as many stanzas as I had time to
listen to. She seemed in every way such an exception-
ally capable woman, and was so exceptionally free, that
one felt she might have been a power in her land, — if only !
But here we came to the parting of the way. We had
had many talks and readings, she sitting at one end of
the verandah, I at the other, lest by a breath or a shadow
fall she should be defiled ; and so I was surprised to be
invited into the house, and asked to partake of curry and
rice, served on a leaf by her own hands. In some parts
of India such hospitality is ordinary enough, but in the
more conservative corners it is rare in Brahman houses ;
and fearing lest she should suffer for it afterwards I hesi-
tated. But she insisted, and I followed her into the
front room, and feasted, or tried to, while she talked.
She had, as she said, examined the Gospel, " looked
through it, all round it, over and under it." And she
had definitely made up her mind that the degradation
involved in accepting it was too great to be seriously
considered. The first bitter years of widowhood had
passed. She is head of her house, and has younger
women in charge. Everyone respects her for her strength
of character and simple nobility, and she walks un-
ashamed through her little world. Then there is her
merit, piles of it, as she assured me, laid up to her
account because of her arduous years of penance and
fasting, and long pilgrimages. Every morning she paints
the Vishnu mark on her brow, then bathes, and performs
many ceremonies. Once every week she fasts, besides
frequent extra fasts. She has relaxed the fasting of late,
"NoT NECESSARY" 139
as she felt she had merit in stock, and could take things
easier. Lastly and chiefly, there is her caste, and no
words can describe what a Brahman's caste is to her.
Put these three things together, — the respect of all her
people, her accumulated merit, her pinnacle of caste.
Put on the other side what she would be the moment she
turned from these to Christ, — a hissing and a byword, a
scorn, a shame, an outcast for ever. It was too much.
And yet it was nothing ; nothing in comparison to
what the Indian wife and mother is compelled to face.
All these social losses are hard to bear, but what must
it be to the mother to face the loss of her child ? We
count these elderly childless widows as, comparatively
speaking, disentangled people ; free, as women's freedom
goes, with a most blessed freedom.
" I stand alone," said the Brahman widow, " but
I stand strong, kept by the force of my own will.
Being who I am, your Jesus Saviour is not necessary
to me."
But we who had come to love her could not accept
this as her final word. She had asked me to visit her
again. We had parted, as she would express it, in a
unity as of one body and soul : so I went again. A
child answered my call : " She is out. The Amnial
is out bathing," she said. The door was wide open
I could see the widow sitting with a mirror in her hand,
carefully painting the Vishnu trident on her forehead.
It seemed better not to go for a while ; so I waited
the advent of the friends (one of whom had caught her
picture), whom to see, she had assured me, would be
heart-melting joy. We three went together.
140 "ALL THESE THINGS"
There was no sign of her about the house, nor did
any answer our call. We sat on the verandah and
waited. Then, as still there was no movement in the
house, I pushed the door a little open and looked in.
There was a heap of what looked like rags in the corner
of the room.
" Amma ! Are you ill ? The Picture-catching Missie
Animal has come to see you." No answer. Another
call, and the heap turned wearily over, and a voice so
broken-spirited that I hardly recognised it, said, "Go
away. I am ill My caste is angry with me because
I invited you in before. I disgraced my orthodox
relations. They leave me alone here now."
There she lay, just ill enough to need tending. Not
too ill to get up and walk out with us or anywhere she
liked ; free. But she did not feel free. She felt bound
to lie there in misery, loneliness, and no love of ours
could help her. " I have no need of anything," the
tired voice said, as we waited by the door, " I still
am a Brahman. I am pure. Your Jesus Saviour is
not necessary to me." And she turned her face to the
wall.
In the next street we have a Mohammedan friend.
She had asked us wistfully one day to show her the
way to heaven. Week by week one or other of us
went and taught her and her younger sister. Both
became interested, and began to talk about being
Christians. Before the girl was old enough to think
of coming out, she was married to a middle-aged man
for whom she had a special aversion. She resented
being compelled to marry him, and resisted up to the
"YOU CANNOT TAKE THE CHILDREN" 141
very last with a childish desperateness that entertained
her captors, who invited us one day to witness an
imitation of the struggle. " He threw her over hia
shoulder, so, and her feet dangled and her anklets
jingled. Oh, it was most amusing ! " We looked
anything but amused, and would not listen or look ;
and the narrator, with bangled arms thrown over her
own shoulders in imitation of the poor child's feet, ran
round the courtyard for her own diversion, laughing
heartily as she cried, " This was how he did it, and this
was what she did. Oh, how her anklets jingled ! "
The husband, his supremacy once established, had not
been unkind, and his young wife had settled down to
the inevitable fairly satisfied.
The elder sister went on learning. She was already
married, and had three little children. She began to
teach them what we taught her. Her husband forbade
her to mention Christ to them. " You can do as you
like," he told her casually, " I can easily get another
cook. But remember you cannot take the children."
She had hardly come to the point of facing leaving
home. He brought her straight up to it. '• You can't
be a Christian in my house," he said, adding as before,
" but remember, you cannot take the children." " Do
you mean I cannot have my baby if I am a Christian ? "
He meant just that.
I remember her the day after he said it. She was
sitting on her verandah, her month-old baby on her
knee, the mark of such a bitter struggle in her face.
" Try to win your husband," we urged. But our visits
were forbidden. Bereft of the little help we could give
142 "ALL THESE THINGS"
her, she lost heart and got cold. The unentangled
widow with no desire at all ; the much-entangled wife
with at first so much desire : another of life's anomalies.
Do these stories weary you, I wonder ? Or do you
feel as we do, that it is better, after all, to share the
day's life fairly with us, if you take the trouble to share
it at all ? On, then, to the next town ; here we are less
remote from the levelling influence of education, and so,
sometimes we are welcome even in Brahman houses.
We spent an hour a few weeks ago with some friendly
Brahmans, who afterwards allowed us to visit their
wives. It was early in the afternoon. Five old
Brahmans were sitting on the verandah, content just
to exist. There was the usual glance of appraisal:
then " It is hot," they murmured sleepily. " Why agitate
yourself by wandering about ? " We found they knew
enough to negative any attempt to speak of Christ.
They preferred, they said, to speak of one of their poets,
beloved by all who read ; and knowing that where the
better Tamil poetry at least is concerned, " all thoughts,
all searches, to this centre tend, all rays in this one
focus meet," we guided their choice to three stanzas,
thus translated by Dr. Pope : " My mother bare me,
left me here, and went to seek her mother, who in self-
same manner has gone in search ; and thus in ceaseless
round goes on the mother quest. Such is the grace this
world affords."
" Unasked men come, appear in the house as kinsmen,
and then silently go. As the bird silently deserts the
tree where its nest yet remains, and goes far off. So
these leave but their body to their friends."
PLAYING BALL WITH TRUTH 143
" Severed are the ties of friendship ; minished are the
pleasant ones ; love's bonds are loosened too ; then look
within and say, ' What profit is there in this joyous
life of thine ? The cry comes up as from a sinking
ship/"
Before long the men were interested, and were pre-
pared to discuss, in the cool and detached manner of
the philosopher, what exactly the poet meant by the
mother quest, deserted nest, sinking ship. " We had the
sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust
in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. Who
delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver us :
in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us." The poet
unconsciously pointed straight to this. " There is no
record but doth hint of Thee." If only these men
would give one hour out of their ample leisure to earnest
consideration, if only they would allow themselves to
be in earnest, surely they would be awakened by the
view of their true position. What baffles one so is the
lack of earnestness. There is something awful in the
sight of immortal men playing ball with Truth. When
we returned from their women folk they were still
playing ball, blind to the words written over the balls,
Life, Death, Judgment to come.
A stone's throw from that verandah scene we saw its
opposite. A girl was wrestling in earnest with the power
that purposed to hold her in bondage. Her true position
was only too clear to her startled heart that day. She
was almost sixteen. She had been waiting for the month
to come which would, she believed, set her free to ask
for baptism. It had almost come, but just before the
144 "ALL THESE THINGS"
earliest day she dare count herself free, the marriage,
postponed till then, to her joy, had been suddenly
planned by her parents, and there was no escape. She
felt like a runner racing for life with a swifter, panting
hard behind. The runner gained upon her, overtook her,
caught her. No one listened to her protest. They
pushed her through the wedding, and hurried her off to
her husband's house.
We teach these girls about the inward liberty of the
spirit, which no untoward circumstance can in the least
affect. And as to physical liberty, we would not feel
justified in refusing refuge to any wife of whose bona fides
we were perfectly assured. But the complications created
by marriage are obvious enough, and always there is the
danger that the spiritual life, which after all was young
and needed nourishing, should succumb when left unfed.
Our visitor in the rest house and his young kins-
woman Lotus, the Brahman widow and the Mahommedan
wife, the old men and the young girl — the three sets of
contrasts could be duplicated by most who have worked
among the more conservative castes. This chapter, with
the two which precede it, touches only the usual.
The Sword and Variance ; the laws of the land con-
cerning women ; custom more potential than any law, —
all these things are against us. "None of these things
move us" The words rise like the chorus to a new
strong song. These things were foreknown to the One
who sent us to face them. A thing foreknown cannot
militate against ultimate victory. " We rejoice in hope
of the glory of God."
It is true that the work is hard. Wherever the object
"THE JOY OF THE DIFFICULT LIFE" 145
aimed at is to win to out-and-out allegiance to Christ, not
the most easily won, but the most estranged, the most
opposed, not in the far future of succeeding generations,
but here and now — there, if letters from almost all over
the world are proof, we find conflict, with exactly what
the word connotes.
Granted it is hard, feel to the core of your soul how
very hard it is ; is there not something within us which
leaps to meet the hardest ? " The Joy of the Difficult
Life " is the inspiring title of a recent article in an Indian
magazine. We talk of our Anglo-Saxon blood —
" That is best blood that hath most iron in't,
To eclgo resolve with."
Should not the very difficulties, the sense of the
impregnable, impossible, send us to our knees, and then
out to the battle front ?
10
CHAPTER XIX
Gardens by the River's Side
IT may be a relief to turn from these crooked and
complicated things, even though they do not " move
us." A river flows close to the town where we
stayed at the beggars' rest-house, and gardens no man
planted border its banks. Near by are some Christian
houses. Life there, on the surface, at least, is straight-
forward and homely ; commonplace, the hunter for excite-
ment would probably call it ; but domestic simplicity has
a charm of its own. One of these Christian homes is a
true little garden.
One day while we stayed at the rest-house, our
Brahman widow friend woke hope in us by sending for
me to come to see her. I went, but was told she was
out. The message was a hoax. The Brahmans living
in the street looked coldly, I thought, as I walked down
their street, alone, for I had not been allowed to bring
an Indian sister in. I went to the Christian quarter
then, with a sense of rest and gladness that there was
such a place to go to. Whatever the Christians are,
they are not unkind and cold.
The half-dozen Christian houses are grouped round a
small mud-built prayer-room, which was under repair,
146
THE WONDERFUL ASIATIC 147
so the school usually conducted in the prayer-room was
in full swing in the catechist's house. Out tumbled the
children to shout salaam in chorus. After them came
the school-mistress, the catechist, his wife and family,
a sickly looking widow and her family, and several
sundries. These all poured in, after me, till we seemed
wedged together in the very small space available, beyond
all chance of doing anything. But the Oriental can work
under adverse conditions. The twenty children were soon
drawn up in class, repeating their lessons at the top
of their voices. The young school-mistress managed to
move among them, and tried to keep order, though
there was hardly room enough to brandish her inoffensive
cane. The widow and her family climbed the nearest
verandah. The sundries, several stray women and young
children, and two goats, talked to each other. The
catechist calmly resumed the labour my advent had
interrupted, letter-writing, requiring much consideration,
to judge by his abstraction for the next half -hour. How
he could concentrate on anything in the midst of such a
racket was surprising, in spite of our familiarity with the
wonderful Asiatic. One of our pastors, alone, iu his native
village, before his ordination, took his B.A. degree in
mathematics, studying at one end of his verandah,
screened off by nothing more substantial than a cocoanut-
leaf mat, from the life of the house — and his seven
young children.
The catechist's wife first got me milk, then sugar, plan-
tains, and cocoanut water. She wanted to make coffee,
and was hardly dissuaded from producing the family cot,
a cane lounge much in use. " You are tired with walk-
148 GARDENS BY THE RIVER'S SIDE
ing up and down in the sun in that Brahman street.
Ah ! When will the Sun of Righteousness shine in that
street ! " More reflections ; then, " If only I had known
you were coming there would have been coffee all ready ! "
And the dear motherly face looked concerned. Catechists'
wives are not rich ; but the best that house afforded, the
coffee reserved for rare feasting days, was pressed upon
me. This over, the catechist's wife sat down happily
in the midst of the school children, and, watching her
opportunity, captured one of them, the disconsolate
widow's small son, who had slid into his place in the
infants' class. The infant was glistening all over. He
had been lavishly oiled. The catechist's wife secured
him by holding firmly to the tuft of hair grown as a top
knot. " Should I not finish what I have begun, 0 my
little parrot ? Wriggle not, 0 slippery one ! " And
she proceeded with further lubrications, explaining
minutely the nature of his not very serious malady.
" And so, afflicted as he is, what could I do but this ?
Such a little clever one ! Verses he knows by the
score, and hymns : — Sing ' Jesus knows all about our
troubles ! ' " It was sung with cheerfulness.
Now this, the care of another's child, though so
ordinary to tell, was not quite ordinary to happen.
Any number of relations will come and camp in each
others' houses. But Love, the sick widow, was not a
relation. She belonged to a different caste, and a caste
which is to the catechist's caste as a mongoose to a cobra,
to quote an expressive idiom for blood feud. The story
came out as I sat there, not that it was consciously told,
it rather told itself.
"PURE RELIGION ... is THIS" 149
Love bad heard the gospel in an open-air meeting
held by the Men's Itinerating Band some years ago.
She called her husband to listen. He was converted.
Immediately afterwards he died.
The heathen relations came to the usual conclusion,
and expressed themselves in the usual way. Public
opinion is wonderfully compelling. Most of us think as
others think, not because we think at all, but simply by
force of its influence. Love almost believed herself
guilty. But she did not give way. Her sturdy in-
dependence of character was mistaken for heart con-
version. She was baptized.
Then she became ill. It was a mysterious illness,
and was, of course, referred direct to the action of the
offended Powers. Love got more and more despondent ;
and though she never seems to have contemplated giving
up Christianity, she was not in touch with Christ, and
she sank into a grumbling condition not conducive to
health. It was about this time that she came to live
near the Christians. The catechist's wife tried to teach
her to read, but teaching is not the good woman's forte.
She tried to lead her to the Lord, but Love resented
being considered anything other than thoroughly right.
She tried to comfort her in her troubles, but Love was
so sorry for herself that the kindly effort failed.
Many a Christian will preach and pray with truly
delightful fervency, and a fluency most amazing. But
when it comes to drawing water for a weakly woman,
still more, actually cooking for her, it is a different
matter. The catechist's wife was ready to do both
these things for Love ; but though Love is willing to
150 GARDENS BY THE RIVER'S SIDE
break her caste, and eat food cooked by all and sundry
when she comes to stay with us, she had no wish to
incur reproach when anywhere near her own people.
The catechist's wife understood the situation. She
would not like one of an unsuitable caste to cook for
her. But she was very sorry for Love, who was not fit
to look after herself and her children, so she did what
she could. She keeps cows. Milk is not a prohibited
food. She fed both mother and children on milk, and
saw to the little ones' clothing and schooling, and all
without fuss of any kind, but simply out of motherliness.
To appreciate the garden, look at the desert. Near
us is a large, prosperous village. Its servants live in a
hamlet near. An old coolie belonging to one of the
leading families was ill. It was a simple trouble. A
bone had stuck in his throat. He could not eat. His
master in the village knew.
His people were ignorant. They did their best.
But their doctor, the barber, failed in his efforts to dis-
lodge the bone. The old man slowly starved to death.
When the bearers went for him, he was light to carry.
Did his master grudge the two rupees it would have
cost to hire a cart and take him to the nearest town ?
" It was not that," and the girl, who had known the old
man, her father's servant, smiled, surprised ; " my father
never thought of it as his affair. Only our own caste
people are our affair."
" Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree ; and
it shall be to the Lord for a name."
One such notable reversal is surely proof that God
"WEAKNESS THY WORKSHOP" 151
does completely reverse the things that were, and that
He does it without necessarily any very long delay
once He has taken the case in hand. Some tell us
we must not expect to see such immediate reversal.
But how far off must we postpone expectation ? We
know our Lord bears gently with the ignorant and
erring, and it is not for us to judge how far the ignor-
ance and error must reach before it passes the confines
of His great lovingkindness. He knows the inner
story, the limitations. He loves the weakest and
dullest, — we feel in our hearts if this were not so He
would not long love us, the weakest and dullest of all ; but
then we believe, and rejoice to believe, that not through
slow processes only, but quickly, as by a word, He can
so deal with character that the life changes to something
manifestly different to what it was before, strongest
where it was weakest, showing forth God's " Instead."
Such a life was lived in the sight of all the people by
a grand old pastor, who was called by the Hindus The
One-Word Man, because of his flawless truthfulness.
Truthfulness is not the predominant characteristic of
most Easterns. The old pastor belonged originally to
a section of the community whose profession compels
the cultivation of lying as an art ; but the fir-tree and
the myrtle grew so strong in him that it was hard to
believe the thorn and the brier could ever have been
there, and his bare word was accepted by Christians and
Hindus alike as final. We know many so transformed.
" Immediately she was made straight, and glorified God,"
is not an obsolete text.
Numerous incidents are told of the way the Hindus
152 GARDENS BY THE RIVER'S SIDE
believed the pastor's word, and were guided by it.
Once, when a prayer-room was being built by a con-
gregation in his charge, within the domains of a certain
opposing Hindu, the Hindus sent men to destroy it by
force. A scrimmage ensued. The Christians were
roughly handled, and a police case was the result. The
Christians wanted their pastor to exaggerate the violence
done to them. The magistrates heard the witnesses,
who all contradicted each other, and then called upon
the pastor to give evidence. He did so with absolute
veracity. The magistrate saw he spoke the truth, with-
out hiding the fault of his own party. He asked the
lawyer on the Hindu side if he had any question to
address to the pastor. The lawyer, who was unprepared
for a perfectly truthful witness, replied that he had
nothing to say. The case was decided then in favour of
the Christians by that Hindu magistrate, upon the sole
evidence of the man who was known to tell the truth.
I remember once seeing his word doubted. His wife
had cataract. A quack was allowed to operate. His
method was sure and simple. He had only to run a
needle into the pupil of the eye, and immediately the
offending particle within would wither up and disappear.
Could anything be simpler? But though so simple,
its successful performance required the greatest skill.
Therefore the fee, to be paid in advance, was ten rupees.
The old pastor had not so much money at hand. His
wife was eager for the operation. She would see an
hour or two afterwards. Now that the blissful moment
was so near, how could she wait ? " Prick now ; next
week the money will come/' said the old man, knowing
"!F YE LOVE ME . . ." 153
that it would. The operator demurred. He had good
reason for doubting after-payment in such cases. " We
are Christians," said the pastor. " Cured or marred, the
money shall be yours." But still the doctor doubted,
and they had to scrape the ten rupees together by
borrowing from neighbours. We were returning from
camp that afternoon, and the quack, fresh from operat-
ing, met us just outside the village. He brandished
what looked like a rusty darning needle. " Look ! this
has given your pastor's wife new eyes ! " Horrified, we
hastened on, and found the two old people in trouble.
The old woman, because of the pain in her eyes, the old
man because of the pain in his heart, — " The doctor did
not believe our word."
This dear old man, by his holy consistent life, had
commended the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ for over
seventy years, when, having walked so far with God, he
was not, for God took him.
Many are asking, Are Missions worth while ? Surely
they are, if such souls are worth winning. But after all,
does it greatly matter what we, the servants, think upon
the subject ? Is not our business rather to discover our
Master's thought, and then obey Him " unto all studious
meeting of His wishes " ?
CHAPTER XX
A Singing Bird in God's Garden
ANEW garden is in making on the hot plain under
the mountains. We spent a day there lately,
watching the work. But first we stayed for an
hour or two in a place which is not a garden.
The Potters' quarter in Skywisdom's village is an
untidy huddle of huts near a small old shrine. We
took our stand near the shrine, beside the raised plat-
form upon which, behind a grated door, the goddess sits
in a dark cell. At one end of the platform there is an
idol painted black. In front, leaning against the wall,
was what I mistook for a clay model of the Virgin and
Child. But it was a local Madonna ; for Satan's travesty
of the truth may be traced through the Hindu system
straight back to the Babylonish Mysteries ; and the holy
Story of Bethlehem is parodied everywhere.
It was sunny outside, and the Potters let us mount
the platform, which was shaded. They gathered in
groups about the steps, and listened silently while we
besought them to turn from these vanities unto the
living God.
We were standing close to the clay goddess as we
spoke, and inadvertently touched it, but no one minded.
164
"NOT so ... BUT" 155
" It does not matter. It has not received the Inspira-
tion. It is still mere clay." And they showed us the
hole left in the back of such images by which the spirit
it is meant to represent is intended to enter into it,
when the ceremony of Inspiration is performed. " The
hole will be closed up afterwards. Then we should not
like you to touch it, for then it becomes a goddess like
the one inside. We would not like you to touch our
god," pointing to the stone figure, " because in the days
of the ancients he was made and inspired. He is now
inhabited." We assured them we would not touch it,
and they were content.
Then two old champions l of the faith rose to defend
a dogma which we had not attacked, for here, as in the
question of demoniacal possession, we are on unknown
ground, and are too ignorant to contradict those who
have lived on it all their lives. " What would I say
then ? That an idol has any real being ? . . . Not so ;
but I say that when the heathen offer sacrifices they
sacrifice to demons and not to God " : so runs Conybeare
and Howson's translation of St. Paul's words to the
Corinthians. " Not so ... But." This inky black
shape, with its gilt eyeballs protruding, its uplifted hand
and club, and general impression of ferocity, has no real
being, but it stands for that which has ; and the sacri-
fices offered to it are offered to a real being, the demon
who deceives these men and women who are talking
round us now. This much at least we know.
" Oh, in the night he came. And he seized this
brother," pointing to one with bloodshot eyes and a
1 For photographs of these two, see Things as They Are, p. 24.
156 A SINGING BIRD IN GOD'S GARDEN
raving expression, " and we cried ' Prophesy.' And he
prophesied : he said, ' Shall not your mother's cousin's
wife have a child within a year ? ' And she, who for
seventeen years had had no child, possessed a son in
eleven months. Then we gave cocoanuts, eggs, cakes, a
goat, and fowls. All he desired we gave." Each of the
men and women there was ready to confirm the truth
of this story, and each was ready to add another, which
like a blazing torch lit up the dark recess of many a
life.
If Michael the archangel, when contending with the
devil about the body of Moses durst not bring against
him a railing accusation, but only said, "The Lord
rebuke thee," much less dare we give free vent to our
feelings, much more may we give pause when we
meet the same defiance. There is calm in the confidence
that the day of the Lord's rebuke will forever end this
working of Satan. But in the meantime these souls are
receiving not the love of the truth, but the workings of
falsehood and deceit of unrighteousness, and we pleaded
with them collectively and then individually to face the
ignored facts of life and the hereafter ; and we preached
Jesus.
" Most excellent doctrine, excellent doctrine," said one
of the old men ; " I intend to think longer upon it.'
So he followed us all day. And in the evening, after
much meditation, he made the following proposal : " For
one hundred rupees, and free food for life, and the
promise of care in my old age, and a worthy funeral,
I will now embrace your religion." Such is the soil
God takes and makes into gardens.
is GOD'S MAN" 157
Straight from the Potters' quarter we went to the
Palm Climbers ; and, surrounded by another crowd of
far more intelligent people, heard a heart-rejoicing
story.
It was told by a young wife whose beaming face bore
witness to its truth. How astonished she would have
been to hear that anywhere there were those who con-
sider " religion " depressing. She evidently found it a
most happy possession.
She had heard of Christianity before her marriage,
but cared nothing for it. After her marriage she came
to live in Skywisdom's village, where a young school-
master, lately converted, had been stationed. Her husband
knew about his life. The Indian is quick to detect a
sham, and equally quick to recognise holiness. " He is
God's man," was the husband's verdict. The wife was
interested and watched. But still she cared nothing.
Her voice was eager as she continued :
" Then late one evening I heard there was preaching
in the street, and all of us went and sat on the ground.
There was a singing box, and a lantern set on the devil's
altar. And you all gathered round the altar and played
the box and sang much. Do you remember ? " And
though we have had many an open-air meeting since
then, we well remember that meeting, when the light
shone out in the black night.
" Oftenest of all the songs you sang was one like this :
" ' Come to Jesus.
Come ! Come !
To the true Lord.
Come I Come ! ' "
158 A SINGING BIRD IN GOD'S GARDEN
She sang through the chorus with evident delight,
and from this point on, her story was punctuated with
choruses, lyrics, and hymns, sung to unrecognisable tunes,
and with many variations as to words ; for we found
our choruses had grown, budded out into fresh verses
to express new emotions. It was an interesting study
in poetical evolution ; and, by the way, in the evolution
of a bit of ground from desert to garden.
In almost all our meetings we speak of sin and its
inevitable outworking. This appeals to the people. The
conscience in them confirms the truth of the words which
are God's. The inner voice corresponds to the outer.
The latent sense of right and wrong becomes active.
You can see the truth grip. Then we speak of the
way of deliverance from sin, and we find that the story
of the love that passeth all knowledge, all telling, draws
with a power that is only Divine. The Indian deep
down is loving. He was created most lovable. If only
he will let himself listen, something within him responds
to that love, goes out to meet it insensibly. Alas for
the many hindrances, the devil's devices coming between
the soul and the clasp of that infinite love ! But some-
times the love breaks through them all, bends over, lifts
over the soul that sincerely has come out to meet it
even a little way.
" As the Iyer spoke my heart quite broke : I saw my
sins rise before my eyes as if a pile of water vessels were
placed the one on the top of the other. And I saw
those sins had been as nails nailing the Lord to the
Cross. And I could not bear it. And I went home,
and my sins followed me all the way, and they came
"OH COME, LET US SING ! " 159
between me and the Lord, like a wall I could never
climb over or pass. But the next night I came again.
My husband came too, and sat with the men. But I —
I was all alone in the crowd, alone with a voice that
spoke to me, and said, ' Oh, sinner, see your sin. It is
thick between the Lord and you.' And then the Iyer
spoke."
That evening the preaching was about the putting
away of sin, and the same chorus was often sung,
" Come to Jesus : come ! " While it was being sung,
suddenly, or gradually, she forgets now, it became
clear to her that there was no hindrance to her coming.
The hindering thing had been put away. Her sin
was gone. That night both husband and wife were
saved.
" Then life became all new to me. I heard a lyric
about the sweetness of Jesus, ' Sweeter than honey,
Divine sweetness, is the sweetness of Jesus the Lord/ "
and she sang it with enthusiasm. " And then I heard a
song about His Coming again. ' Oh, be ready ! The
Lord Jesus is coming ! Oh, rest your souls (a new
verse-bud, this) for Jesus is coming ! ' And so no
trouble could ever seem great, for as the dew when the
sun looks upon it so are all troubles ; they are passing !
they are passing ! And Jesus is coming, soon coming
again. Now like the young rice seeing the rain, my
heart rejoices," she concluded, "and every day I am
opening my mouth to taste more of the sweetness,
sweeter than honey."
I remembered the catechist's testimony about her.
" She sings as she goes to her work on the hills, and she
160 A SINGING BIRD IN GOD'S GARDEN
sings when she comes home in the evening. And she
sings all the time she is working (except when she has to
stop," he added truthfully), " she is always singing some-
thing. Her life is all sprinkled with songs." God has
singing birds in His garden.
But this singing bird became slightly ill. The Chris-
tians of Skywisdom's village are working people. They
start early for the mountains where their work is, and
return late, and are, as one would expect, a hardy healthy
race. Wisdom's Flower had never been the least ill
before. She did not understand being ill, and she
found the experience trying. One day she appeared at
Dohnavur carrying a bundle of rice : " I have come for
four days; I have brought rice for four days' food.
Also I have brought four annas as a thankoffering for
healing." And she dropped her bundle on the floor and
the fourpence in my hand. " But will you not wait till
you are healed, and then give your thankoffering ? "
" Why should I wait ? I thank God now. This is my
thanks beforehand."
Her trouble would have been easily cured. Out in
the district, far from efficient medical help, we have
constantly to do the best we can for all sorts of minor
afflictions. This particular complaint is very familiar,
and we gave the appropriate powder, which she received
with prayer. But the medicine's activity disturbed her,
and on the second day she came to us : " Amma, the
Lord has healed my soul of the disease of sin " ; and she
laid her hand on the place where she believes her soul
to be. " Now this organ " (naming it explicitly) " has a
disease " ; and she moved her hand a little lower down ;
" PITY MY SIMPLICITY" 161
" why should not He who healed my soul heal my other
organ also ? "
She was young in the faith. We did not perplex her
with grown-up arguments. She followed the leading she
felt had been given ; and to-day, healed and happy,
God's bird is singing in His garden.
ii
CHAPTER XXI
Dry Land
WE are often glad that India is not all a Shah Najaf.
And though we feel strongly that it is time
Christ's soldiers were in more earnest about
winning the forts that are harder to win, it is good to
know there are many less inaccessible places, such as
Skywisdom's village, and a multitude of people for whom
conversion need not necessarily mean complete social
ostracism. When a village allows a Christian of its
own clan to continue living within it, and to share its
common life, there is hope for that village. The light
can shine from within, instead of only from without. But
even here, it is not a case of " come, see, and conquer " ;
the tactics of the enemy are different, his attack less
ferocious ; but he is there, though we may not see him
distinctly at first.
Once more our story looks back to the year when the
antagonistic town said " Victory to Siva," and saw
victory to Christ. Six or seven miles east of that town
there is a village where nothing of note had ever
happened, so far as any one knew. Several nominal
Christians lived there, and the villagers knew the main
facts of Christianity, but they took no interest in it,
162
"TOO BLIND TO HAVE DESIRE TO SEE" 163
Their field of thought was small. All that makes life
tense, vivid, was just not there, or at least was not ap-
parent. If you want to know how circumscribed village
life may be, sit down by the well in the early morning, and
listen to the conversation. Then spend the forenoon in
a friendly courtyard. You will find food for reflection.
The village was fast asleep, what the Bible calls dead.
A real fight is exhilarating, but the stillness of the sleep
of death has nothing exciting about it. In such places
one's faith is apt to lie low, and one is inclined to be
almost quiescent. We need to be roused and shamed out
of our fatal content to live while sou e are dead. We
need to be reinspired with the faith tha accounts God
able to raise them up even from the dead.
This slumberous village was not closed to us. It
belonged to a caste which was not affected by the
happenings elsewhere. We valued the opportunity
to visit it and its allied villages during the hot
season of that year, when distant itineration was
impossible.
Imagine a waste of blazing sand ; the reflected glow
rises up through the hot air and heats it seven times
hotter. You wonder how the cactus and the scrub can
live in such hot sand. It burns the bare feet of a boy
as he runs across it. But there is water near, and a
perfect oasis of palm. You pass it, and cross a jungle
belt. Your bullock cart presses its way through the
thorns, and they scratch its roof vindictively. On
you go, and the thorns grow still closer and tear
at your mat roof more fiercely. At last you break
through and find yourself in the village, whose name
164 DRY LAND
means the Village of Sand, but which we call the Village
of Shrines.
There are more shrines than houses. Small, pyra-
midical red mud altars stand under every scrubby tree.
It is Athens in mud. But the contrast between marble
and mud is as nothing compared with the contrast be-
tween those Athenians and these villagers, from whose
mind nothing is further than the desire to hear or tell
any new thing. The Tamils are a most intelligent race,
and capable of almost anything; but you often come
across hamlets like this one, buried in the country,
whose inhabitants know little, and care less, about the
movements of the world outside their encompassing
jungle. One would have expected that so many shrines
implied some keenness about religion ; but if such a
sentiment existed, it was most successfully concealed.
Stand now with us by these thorn bushes and look :
you see tumble-down cottages, built anyhow and any-
where, surrounded by broken mud walls and half-finished
fences. There is not a straight length of street, or a
well-swept courtyard, or a thrifty-looking homestead in
the place.
A chorus, sung lustily, if not musically, brings the
women out into the sunshine, and, nothing loth, they
loll about on their narrow verandah-ledges and gaze at
us from afar. Another chorus, and they come a little
closer. One of us, an Indian sister, speaks ; they move
off slowly, just out of earshot, and begin to talk to each
other. The poor sister looks blank, expostulates, invites,
in vain. Nobody has curiosity enough to listen, though
they are willing to stare, for that does not involve an
HOPELESS? 165
exertion. So we scatter, and go to their houses, and talk
to them one by one. Some drift off to their work ; some
listen a little. The Gospel of Christ is the Power of
God, the Power of God, we say to ourselves over and
over, and watch to see it lay hold on a soul, and, in spite
of all seemings, believe to see. But just then and there
we see nothing at all. And we work our way back
through the thorns to the cart.
We went again ; it was just the same. Eepeated visits
only deepened our disappointment. We might as well
have spoken to their native sand for all the impression
we appeared to create upon the people. The place was
like a bit of primeval creation, for no plant of the field
was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet
sprung up. It was just dry land, so dry and hard that
we felt as if the little blade of the tender grass would
be hurt and broken if it tried to win its way through,
anywhere — till we remembered the mist that went up
and watered the whole face of the ground ; and the
imagery of the 65th Psalm seemed illuminated in the
tropical light : " Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it.
Thou greatly enrichest it; the river of God is full of
water : Thou providest them corn when Thou hast so
prepared the earth. Thou waterest her furrows abund-
antly ; Thou settlest the ridges thereof : Thou makest it
soft with showers ; Thou blessest the springing thereof."
The very thought of it all brought cool in the midst of
the heat.
But for months we worked on, and saw nothing. The
people listened or did not listen, just as they felt inclined.
They never argued or opposed. They were not alive
166 DRY LAND
enough. They were perfectly content to be as they
were. The vision that dissatisfied was not yet theirs.
All workers in all lands know some such men and
women ; know, too, what it is to wonder whether there
is any use in going on trying to arouse them.
At last we became aware of a certain sensible differ-
ence. There was a little feeble opposition, which gradu-
ally gathered force. Something was happening. We
waited awhile before we could be sure that the something
would develop into anything. Meanwhile, we went away on
an itinerating tour. We returned to find the first blade
through. A man and his wife in the Village of Shrines
were genuinely converted. They had heard at an open-
air meeting — the man at one, the woman at another.
They knew very little, but they were sure of that little.
From that time forth we had a welcome when we went.
Some months passed, and we had a Baptism day.
Then it came out that the wife was a notable character.
She had been a devil-dancer ; and she had all the power
and influence of one upon whom the afflatus falls ; so
her baptism made a certain stir. One could see a look
upon the faces of the people as they saw her go down
into the water — a wondering, almost frightened look.
There was a breathless pause as she stood there, out
in the shining of the sunset, — and then she came back
radiant. And we lived in the thirteenth verse of our
Psalm that day : " They shout for joy, they also sing."
But the Village of Shrines was still Athens in mud.
Perhaps one little mud altar was knocked down that
day. Scores of them still stood hot and red as we
passed them week by week. The people do not belong
"HOPE THOU IN GOD" 167
to a caste which refuses a Christian house-room in its
midst, so our friends went back to their home, and
witnessed bravely there. But two months passed
blankly. Nobody stirred. The village seemed to have
turned in its sleep, and to sleep all the sounder for
having been roused.
One morning, shortly before we went, as we waited
before the Lord about the place, we felt drawn to ask
for the conversion of some one there that very day.
And the name of one, of whom we knew, was brought
to us as we prayed. We were pressed to ask for her.
Everyone who knows what it is to be moved to pray
in this way knows how solemn it is, and how easily a
mistake may be made ; and yet when the pressure comes
we dare not resist it : so we prayed.
The one whose name was brought before us was not
a woman we should have chosen. She was a Temple
devotee, a widow with two children, very ignorant, and
so far as we knew quite uninterested in Christianity.
Moreover, we did not know that she was in the village,
and we did not know where her house was. We knew
that if we went and asked for her, she would promptly
hide or be hidden. So there was nothing hopeful in
the prospect from a human point of view. It looked
impossible. But we have not to look at things from a
human point of view, so that did not matter, and " we
reckon on God who is at home in impossibilities."
When this prayer was laid on us, there were two of
our little band who felt puzzled. They said, " But how
shall we find her ? " As our cart broke through the
thorn bushes, and we got out and stood on the sand, a
168 DRY LAND
woman in white ran out of a house near by and flung
herself down on the ground at our feet. It was this
very woman. I had not seen her before ; but I knew in
a moment by the band sisters' faces that it must be she.
We drew her aside, and she followed as one in a
trance. We got her into the prayer-room, and tried to
find out what had brought her to us, for never before
had we seen one come like that, unless she was in bodily
need and eagerly craving help. She had nothing to say
about it. Then we told her how we had prayed. She
did not understand. There she sat on the floor, and we
beside her, a dull, stupid, uninteresting woman, without
the least apparent desire after God, yet "He died for
desire of her." We looked at her, and read the writing
on her forehead which no earth soil could quite obliterate,
" For whom Christ died."
Stupid was what she seemed at first; imbecile was
what she seemed after half an hour's endeavour to get
one thought into her mind. Every few minutes she
glanced at the door as if meditating an escape. We
tried to put things before her in simple ways, using
familiar illustrations to arrest her attention. But after
a time we began to doubt whether she was capable of
paying attention to anything. We almost gave up at
last. She did not want to listen, she only wanted to
get away. And yet she had come of her own accord.
We were mystified. Then a bystander said something
which threw a light upon it. I did not stop to think
of all that was meant at that moment; but realising
that talking was useless, and holding her lest she
should slip away, we knelt down beside her and prayed.
CHAPTER XXII
"Let it bring forth tender Grass"
WHEN we rose from our knees we saw a change in
the devotee's face and manner. Those who have
seen such changes wrought will understand : to
those who have not, all this tale will seem foolishness.
There was no violent emotion ; but something had gone,
something had come. Rather, Some One had come.
She began to pray herself. What she said was a
medley of heathen phrases mixed with a word of sense
here and there. Wisdom, the ex-devil-dancer who had
joined us, looked shocked. We told her God would wash
the prayer clean and make it all right. But Wisdom
drew us aside. " You do not know her as we know her,"
she said, and amplified the word dropped by the by-
stander : " she is possessed by a strong demon. I used
to serve devils. I know all about it. Sometimes I too
was possessed. But she is different entirely. She sold
herself to her demon, and he abides in her continually.
Often he seizes her and makes her do terrible things in
his name. She is helpless in his hands. Between times
she is as you see her, like one without a mind. We
think she is insane. This praying is not real. Do not
believe in her. You will be disappointed afterwards."
169
170 " LET IT BRING FORTH TENDER GRASS "
The only perplexity to Wisdom was the devotee's coming
to us. All the rest was plain hypocrisy or stupidity, or
both. Her coming in that strange way was inexplicable
upon either theory. The devotee lived her life alone,
and never went near the Christians.
But to me this fact was eloquent. I had not thought
of her as possessed. As I saw her there was nothing
of the special phenomena we associate with such in-
habitation. She seemed to us the dullest of all the dull
women we had seen in that dull village, the deadest of
the dead. There was nothing uncanny about her, nothing
impressive. The one remarkable thing was just her
coming to us as she did, rushing straight for us when we
appeared, falling down at our feet. " They arrived at
the country of the Gadarenes. And when He went forth
to land there met Him out of the city a certain man
which had devils long time. When he saw Jesus he
cried out and fell down before Him." Could her coming
so be chance ? Was it not that the Spirit before whom
devils quail had drawn her to meet Him who had come
to her village, and caused her to fall down before Him ?
For He must have been with us according to His promise
as we stood on the sand by the cart. There are times
when one feels that if a Voice spoke one's name, and one
turned and saw Him — Eabboni, Master — it could hardly
be a surprise.
Wisdom and her husband, who had returned from
work, listened at first rather doubtfully. " The heavens
touch the earth on the horizon of our vision, but it
always seems farthest to the sky from the spot where
we stand." It is easier to believe in miracles happening
is HUSHING ME" 171
a long way off than just here. But as we talked together
it was as if we were all swung up to higher altitudes
of faith and expectation. Husband and wife, our little
band, and the bewildered devotee knelt down in Wisdom's
courtyard, and praised God, and asked for perfect
recovery, mental health, and spiritual health. And then
putting the devotee's hand in Wisdom's we left her to
her care. A few weeks afterwards the message reached
us, " Come quickly. The devotee's only daughter is dead."
A blow like this often follows the first turning towards
Christ, and if the new convert is not staggered by it,
another often follows confession in baptism. This is
another of the facts we never concern ourselves to
explain. We only know it happens so.
We went at once. We found the poor mother sitting
quietly with Wisdom, in Wisdom's little house. She
was in sore grief, but perfectly calm. " Jesus is holding
me in His arms, as I held my child when she was a
babe. He is hushing me," she said. We could hardly
believe that she was the one who had seemed so
imbecile.
The heathen were jubilant, quite sure taey would
have her back. " Did we not warn you ? Did we not
tell you your demon would avenge himself ? Now he
has taken your golden girl. Next he will take your
eye's jewel (her boy). Lastly, he will come for you.
You will surely all be slain : and we shall see."
There was cause for their words. In a neighbouring
village a devil dancer of some note had recently publicly
professed faith in Christ. Two days later her only son
sickened with cholera and died. Trouble upon trouble
172 "LET IT BRING FORTH TENDER GRASS"
followed till she yielded ; then all went well. So their
talk stirred up every superstitious fear, and blew upon
Wisdom's friend from all four sides at once. Would she
stand ? She stood. " For He is holding me," she said.
Months of trial followed. Her boy was a constant
source of anxiety. Any little ailment seemed serious.
" Is what they are saying true ? Will he, too, die ? "
she asked us one day pitifully. But she learned to roll
her burden off, and not to take it back. She was spared
this crowning grief. Her boy was protected, her faith
braced.
One of the wonderful things to watch in connection
with the devotee was the change that passed over her
face. It had been coarse. It became refined. That
refinement of expression, which so occupies you as you
look that you do not notice fleshly details, was hers
now — " For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."
Her mind was renewed. It was good to see it clearing
as the landscape clears in the morning. We read
learned disquisitions on the impossibility of the Creative
Word taking immediate and visible effect. " Let there
be light : and there was light," is too simple for our
wisdom now — or too profound ? And we turn from
the book's page straight to life's, and wonder as we look,
spelling slowly out the words that are being written
there, whether those who write in the other books have
watched God writing His. Perhaps they have not the
leisure of Marioah and his wife, who, when the Angel did
wondrously, looked on.
God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things
that are not as though they were, God whose Creative
"IF IT BE NOT HE, THEN WHO IS IT?" 173
Word does take immediate and visible effect upon that
mysterious Thing, more mysterious than matter, which
we call Soul : God, Creator, and Saviour, did won-
drously ; and we looked on.
The temple devotee was that no longer. She with-
drew at once from all connection with the temple. Her
boy had been trained to chant prayers and idol songs,
for which service the priests paid well. She took him
away and sent him to school. This left her poor ; but
she got some humble work in the village, and from the
first spent her spare time in what she called " looking
for lost sheep." She and Wisdom talked to their neigh-
bours, and went about where they could, telling any who
would listen about Jesus.
CHAPTER XXIII
"And it was so"
fTlHREE or four years after her conversion the devotee,
-L Pearl Shell, got work in a market town some miles
from her native village. Before she had been long
there she heard of a young girl who was shut up in the
town, and often mercilessly beaten because it was known
that she wanted to be a Christian.
The year which we look back upon as the year of
beginning of battles had been full of the sort of sorrow
which battles mean. When the houses closed, as we
told before, they closed upon eager, earnest, little hearts.
Six children who, we knew, were much interested, lost
all chance of hearing more. They were punished for
wanting to hear. We heard of these punishments, and
we felt as a mother would feel if her little ones were
being badly hurt, and strong hands held her from
running to them. One by one all the six gave way.
So often it is just like that: the plant is sending
rootlets out: it will grip if it has time. Suddenly,
fiercely downward sweeps a great wind from the wilder-
ness, and we see what looks like our little plant flying
with other frightened things in the dust before the
storm. The great wind passes. We search for our
174
" PIERCED WITH PAIN" 1*75
plant. We find it at last quite withered and dead,
with dead white roots like tangled threads, lying limp
on a heap of leaves, the de'bris of the storm. And only
yesterday, perhaps, we were glad because it was alive.
There was one, a seventh, Sixfaced by name, whom
we did not count, because she had not been properly
taught. She had only heard a little in an open-air
meeting. She came, after hearing that little, and asked
us to keep her. She wanted to join our Way, she said.
But she was much too young, and her knowledge of the
Way she wished to join was so very limited that we did
not seriously consider her proposal, but we sent her
home, promising to call and ask her people to allow
us to teach her.
We called as we promised, and we saw that child
punished for having wished to be taught. The shock
would hurt if we told how she was punished. Some of
us have to stand such shocks, and they send us home
tingling in every nerve, as if the blows had been twice
our own, and they set our whole being crying to God,
" How long ? how long ? "
After the punishment the child was hurried away to
the town where Pearl Shell had found work. For three
years we heard nothing of her. When Pearl Shell's
message reached us we felt sure that Sixfaced must be
the girl in question. Inquiries proved it was so. We
urged Pearl Shell to try to see her and to comfort her.
Pearl Shell found it difficult. Sixfaced was kept in
what was virtually imprisonment. Occasionally the sound
of blows and broken cries reached the outer world. Once
the Hindu neighbours interfered. But such interference
176 "AND IT WAS SO"
is not popular nor often possible in India. The uncle
in whose guardianship the girl was, had killed her
mother in a fit of passion. Money had changed hands.
The thing had been hushed up. But men feared him ;
the defenceless child was wholly in his power.
One day, she tells us now, he had held her down
firmly with one hand, while he struck her with the
other, shouting between each blow, " This is for daring to
persist that you will join the Christian Way." She had
almost utterly given up hope of any deliverance reaching
her, but a new hope shot through her. She would pray.
She had only once seen a Christian pray. She tried to
recall how we did it. But the excitement of those few
hurried minutes, when, three years ago, she had pleaded
with us to keep her, had blotted out memory of detail.
She only remembered we spoke to the One we called
Jesus, the Loving Saviour, and that we had assured her
He heard. So she joined her hands in the heathen way,
and, with wide-open eyes looking timidly round lest her
dreaded uncle should see, she repeated often her single
petition, " Keep my uncle from beating me." She did
not expect to hear a voice answer. No voice had
answered when we spoke in the bungalow. But she
waited a minute, and felt comforted, she says. The
room in which she was had grown dark. She remem-
bered a fragment of truth she knew, that this Jesus
Saviour had once been beaten, and then fastened (how,
she did not know) to a piece of wood till He died. As
He had been beaten, He must know how very much it
hurt. She let the strange comfort of this thought sink
down to the depths of her weary heart. Then she
"KNEEL TO KNOW" 177
slipped out of the room. Her uncle was standing close
to the door. She trembled as she saw him. But he did
not speak to her. He never beat her again.
After this she seems to have understood she could
pray about everything. Once a marriage seemed immi-
nent : " Jesus, 0 Jesus ! stop it. Do not let me be
tied." The marriage fell through. Then the relatives
tried to entangle her by means of a kind of lottery. On
a certain day, always postponed, a large sum of money
and some jewels would fall to her share : " Jesus, 0
Jesus ! let not my heart become caught by money and
jewels." And so she was kept.
But Sixfaced, by the time Pearl Shell after many vain
attempts came in touch with her, was discouraged. She
had waited through those three years in hope that we
would come for her. We had told her, little thinking
how eagerly she would remember it, that we could not
protect her till she was sixteen. She believed herself
sixteen now, and, not realising how impossible action
on our part was, she could not understand our silence.
For we had to be all but silent. We sent messages
of love and sympathy to her through Pearl Shell, as soon
as we knew where she was. But we could not say one
word which could afterwards be translated into an
invitation to come to us. We had no means of knowing
that she was still steadfast, for much I have written was
at that time unknown to us, and an Indian girl's strength
is not a thing to be counted upon. But Pearl Shell
determined to help her to escape, and she prayed
with the simple courage of faith for guidance in this
difficult matter.
12
178 "AND IT WAS so"
It was most difficult. Sixfaced did not look sixteen.
How was she to be proved over sixteen ? She was
an orphan. The uncle, her guardian, could easily " prove "
her any age he wished. It is a criminal offence to con-
cern oneself with a minor's escape from her home. Pearl
Shell knew little of legal complications, but she did
know that the caste could kill her if she did it. And
the town was full of eyes.
One day when she was praying she believed that
she was told to go to a certain stream, where sometimes
Sixfaced was sent to bathe, and there to arrange with
her (the opportunity, she believed, would be given) to
walk out of the town there and then, in faith that the
eyes of the people they would meet would be kept from
seeing them. To that poor ignorant woman the thought
was overwhelming. How could she dare do such a
thing ? She did it.
She went to the stream, found Sixfaced there, had a
chance for a word alone. The girl, in utmost simplicity,
believed God would work a miracle and " blind the eyes " of
the people, her caste men, she knew they were sure to meet.
Together these two walked straight from that stream,
through the streets, and out of the town. When we heard
it we hardly believed it ; it sounded so impossible.
For three long miles they walked along the highway
leading from that town to the village where we used to
live. There they were welcomed by the pastor and his
wife. There they heard the good news that next day
Mr. and Mrs. Walker were expected, en route for Doh-
navur, from Ceylon. " Lord, thou knowest we cannot
protect this girl, if her people come in strength," the
"REJOICE WITH ME" 179
pastor prayed, "hinder them that they may not come
till the Iyer and the Animal arrive from Ceylon." This
prayer was answered. The uncle was hindered in his
purpose to gather his castemen and carry his niece off
by force. Knowing nothing of the circumstances, Mr.
and Mrs. Walker came just in time to stand by Six-
faced through the ordeal of facing her relations. Legal
questions were not raised. Four days afterwards the
joyful jingle of bullock bells brought us all out in
expectancy. Such moments in missionary lives are
Overweights of Joy.
Far more than Overweights ! Oh, the joy that cannot
be measured when the Shepherd says, " Rejoice with
Me ! " Can any words describe it ? "I have such an
intense recollection of the joy that comes in the work at
times," writes a Japanese missionary, " that I am half
afraid of giving exaggerated impressions to people at
home. Some people do seem to think it so extraordinary.
Of course there are disappointments and discouraging
times, which come very often. Still I don't think there
can be any other joy in the world quite like the joy of
being with Christ when He finds a soul that has been
out in the dark all its life."
There was much to hear ; and as we heard it told so
simply, we felt as if this unknown one had sung her part
in the martyr's song —
"But I, amid the torture and the taunting,
I have had Thee.
Thy hand was holding my hand fast and faster,
Thy voice was close to me ;
And glorious eyes said, ' Follow Me, thy Master ;
Smile as I smile, thy faithfulness to see.'
180 "AND IT WAS so"
Perhaps this is too noble a song to fit in lips so ignorant.
She did not know enough to rise so high.
Sometimes so many agencies are used towards the
conversion of a soul that we almost lose sight of the
arm of the Lord for the sleeve which covers it. But
here it was laid bare. Surely that child was kept and
led by a Power most evidently Divine that all "may
know that this is Thy hand; that Thou, Lord, hast
done it."
Sixfaced (now called Gladness) had everything to
learn. When for the first time she heard the full story
of our Lord's crucifixion she was broken-hearted. We
read it to her slowly, verse by verse, from the 19th
chapter of St. John. She had never seen it pictured ;
but as the words of that ancient writing dropped into
her soul, they became spirit and life ; it was as if a
picture were being drawn and coloured before her.
Together we sat in silence at the foot of the Cross,
looking.
C. H. Tyndall, in his book Electricity and its Simili-
tudes, shows how the intellectual and physical deficiency
which makes us insensible to the finer forms of electrical
energy about us, is analogous to our spiritual insensitive-
ness. If only we had an " electric eye," an " electric
sense," what a world of wonder would open to us. If
only the spirit within us were more sensitive to spiritual
impressions, what surprises God could give us, what
passion of joy ! Or perhaps an unspeakable awe would
fall such as fell upon us then ; for as we sat together,
suddenly the denseness of the flesh seemed to become thin.
Almost that keener sense was given, almost that vision
"HE SAYS HE WILL GO BACK WITH ME" 181
that pierces through sense, till, aware by some quick
apprehension of a Presence moving somewhere near, our
very soul trembled. The moment flashed for us and
passed. No effort of will could recall it. Perhaps such
moments long detained would be too intense for the
mortal in us. We turned again to the usual. But that
moment's mark has not passed.
The devotee to whose simple courage we owed so
much did not feel courageous. She would have been
astonished had she known we thought her so. She feared
to return to the town. Some child might have seen her
with the girl, though apparently no grown person had.
A child can talk. She dreaded the vengeance of the
caste. She knew only too well what a mob of infuriated
men and women can do. She knew, too, what can be done
without a mob, in secret. She, an unprotected widow,
to live among those people ! At first she felt she could
not ; it would be like living over a smouldering fire.
But she prayed. Then she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact
fashion : " He says He will go back with me " ; and
she went back. When we heard about it we thought
it heroic.
Think of what she was. God called the dry land
Earth. We described the dry land poorly :
" Fuller for him be the hours 1
Give him emotion though pain 1
Let him live. Let him feel / have lived.
Heap up his moments with life.
Triple his pulses with fame ! "
Take these five lines. Divest them of every iota
of force. Reverse them. Let them lie out languid,
182 "AND IT WAS so"
nerveless. There you have the type we have tried to
show — the lifeless, the dry land God called Earth.
God said, " Let the earth bring forth tender grass, the
herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after
his kind, whose seed is in itself. And it was so."
CHAPTER XXIV
"Hold me on with a steady Pace"
WHEN a convert comes out, and especially after she
is baptized, those who have faithfully prayed so
far draw a breath of relief. She is safe now,
they think, and relax. Intensity in anything is tiring.
Intensity in prayer leaves us spent. But it is not safe
to relax.
In the year 1897 a South Indian missionary, the leader
of a men's Itinerancy, in writing to his committee about
his Band, mentioned one especially as being very earnest.
In compiling the year's report, attention was drawn to
this man by a marginal note, "A successful soul-winner."
" The leader," the text said, " knows few men who seem
so wholly fitted as he is to point men to the Saviour."
When this was written it was true. Before the printed
report reached South India the successful soul-winner
was back in Hinduism ; to-day he is a Saivite, an avowed
worshipper of Siva.
He was one of the first converts I knew intimately.
He came with the men's Band to preach in the villages
round our home. Every day at noon we used to teach
the men new choruses, and the man who struck us most
because of his keenness in learning the choruses and
183
184 "HOLD ME ON WITH A STEADY PACE"
delight in using them was Spiritual-Guide, as his name
means, a man with a strong thoughtful face, and a kind,
frank manner. The chorus which had helped Star, as a
child, was the one he appropriated at once, " Jesus loves,
saves, keeps." He used to sing it all over the com-
pound, and once in a dry meeting of nominal Christians
this convert from Hinduism startled the dulness by
breaking out with his chorus, and then pleading with
those cold hearts to let the love of Jesus in. For three
years he worked in the men's Itinerancy. He had
special access to the Brahmans because of his perfect
command of the higher Tamil language, and once he had
won a hearing, his fervency held them to listen to the
end. He was beloved by the band's leader, and
thoroughly trusted by all. Suddenly one day they
missed him, found he had gone to the nearest great
Saivite temple, and traced him home. He was last seen
sitting on the ground as a Hindu guru, with a rosary
of Siva's berries round his neck, and Siva's ashes smeared
on his forehead.
In the midst of his student days M'Cheyne prayed,
" God hold me on with a steady pace ! " God hold us on
with a steady pace in prayer for those who have lately
come out of Hinduism, lest we stop before the goal is
reached. It is safe to say that in India, at least, de-
fection is a possible contingency which can never be
ignored. There are fine threads woven round the newly
won convert's soul which even his break from Hinduism
has not wholly snapped : these threads can pull. He
hears voices inaudible to us, or if audible, unmean-
ing ; to him they are intense in meaning, wooing as siren
SIDE TRACKED 185
songs. There are influences about him of which we are
not sensible. Oh for more discerning sympathy with
those whose temptations, like their sorrows, pass the
bounds of our experience !
A potent cause of declension where the truly earnest
are concerned is found in the weariness of repulse day
after day, as the message they are so eager to give is
carelessly and often contemptuously refused. Christ
lifted up does draw. A missionary on fire to see souls
saved does see souls saved. But it is no less true that
often the call is to enter deep into the fellowship of His
sufferings. Then, if this aspect of things is forgotten,
and we look around instead of up into the face of Jesus,
we get hopeless, and cold and hard, uncaring that souls
are perishing. From this the step is easy to slackness in
effort for them and indolence in prayer. Then we get
sidetracked, engrossed in something other than what
makes for the winning of souls ; and Satan, content,
directs his attention elsewhere. Something of the same
sort happens if the worker is a Christian born. If he is
a convert he retrogrades often irreparably.
Perhaps the strain to which those for whom we now
ask your special prayer are subjected, will be better
understood if I tell you what has lately happened here.
About two miles from Dohnavur, across a bare bit of
scorching plain, there is a small old-fashioned place
called the Village of the Temple. None of us may walk
down the Brahman street. When the men's Itinerating
Baud comes round it has to stand at the end of the street
and speak down it to any who will condescend to listen.
The women of this village were unevangelised when we
186 "HOLD ME ON WITH A STEADY PACE"
first went there. Two of the converts, Star and Joy,
went regularly with an older woman for several months.
Then the great heat of March and early April almost
forced them to desist, for the plain is quite unshaded on
that side, and they are not accustomed to exposure. But
they would not give in, and toiled on till the following
November, with only a six weeks' break when we went
to the hills. The monsoon rains then threatened to stop
them. They waded sometimes knee-deep through the
morass rather than miss their afternoon for that village.
They had their reward in winning an entrance to many
houses there.
At last, to their delight, they saw what they believed
was the first green blade. They almost ran as they
came home to tell us of it. A girl of eighteen, un-
accountably still unmarried, wanted to be a Christian ;
she had let her people know ; they did not seem opposed.
It sounded too good to be true. And another, lately
married, had begun to talk to her husband, who also
seemed interested. Two little slender blades of hope,
but how precious to the sowers, to whom they were the
earnest of a harvest that seemed to their quickened
imagination quite near that day.
A few weeks passed ; the two first to become impressed
went on satisfactorily; others began to learn, others
wanted to learn. One of these last was a young girl
whose face, looking through a window, attracted them as
they passed. They stopped at the door, and asked a
middle-aged man who was working at a fine gold chain
on the verandah if they might come in. He answered
curtly that his sister had no time for conversation.
A WOMAN'S CASTE is HER KELIGION 187
They passed on, but as they passed they caught another
glimpse of the bright face with its dark sparkling eyes,
and a curious quick sympathy sprang into life between
them. Each drew to the other without the interchange
of words.
Shortly afterwards I went to see the obdurate brother.
Lean of soul he seemed, and stiff of mind. " Beautiful,
my sister, is busy ; she has no time to receive instruc-
tion." Pressed further, he declared himself adverse to
this new-fangled teaching of women, " who are inferior
beings, to whom religion does not pertain, whose whole
duty consists in obedience. A woman's caste is her reli-
gion ; her husband is her god."
Beautiful listened to her brother's tirade from a dark
corner behind the door. She had heard it a hundred
times before, saw nothing unnatural in it. But all the
same she craved for more. She had been made for
more than this. And through her cousin, the unmarried
girl who had begun to be interested, she came to an
understanding with our girls that sooner or later she
would hear all they could tell her about Jesus. We
think her idea was that, after her marriage, which was
impending, she would be able to learn. But she was
married into a family resident twenty miles distant.
So that plan failed.
For some months after her marriage all went well.
Her mother answered our questions as to her health
and happiness with a smiling face. Beautiful had
married well. The jewels she wore were magnificent.
Her new relations were charmed with her ; the mother
was content. But suddenly, as things happen here,
188 "HOLD ME ON WITH A STEADY PACE"
we heard that Beautiful was dead, — had hanged her-
self.
Gradually the truth oozed out. Beautiful's caste, like
all strict castes, forbids the eating of flesh food. But
as a concession to the needs of young children, fish
is allowed till the marriage day. After that, never.
Beautiful conformed of course to the rules of her caste ;
but she was not strong, an uncontrollable craving for the
food to which she had been accustomed took possession
of her, and she appealed to her young husband to let her
have it. He was surprised, and as she insisted, angry.
The mother-in-law made mischief. The girl was punished.
Her spirit was broken. One day she was left alone in
a room. When her people returned, she was found
hanging from a rope tied to a beam. They cut her
down, but the pretty little head fell limp. Then they
noticed her jewels were gone, and they searched and found
them all in a packet marked for her husband. It was a
sort of mute protestation that she had meant to be good.
When the story reached the Village of the Temple,
the immediate result was that every girl who was learn-
ing with us was told to return her books. Beautiful
had wanted to learn, and Beautiful had disgraced her
caste. The inconsequence of the argument did not seem
to strike anybody. The girl who had seemed so warm,
cooled; the young wife ceased to read to her husband.
Several girls who appeared to be drawing towards a
vital interest in 'the things of Christ were hurriedly
married and despatched to distant villages. The fear
and the hurry would have been ludicrous if it had not
been for the tragedy — that one young life so suddenly
"LET THINE OWN RAIN FALL" 189
ended ; these many young lives pushed back into
death.
The workers who had so patiently toiled through the
heat, and the rain, and the burning heat again, for over a
year, could not believe at first that the people would
hold to their decision, and they continued going till
convinced that it was useless. Not a house would open
to them. They knew this phase would pass ; leave the
village for a year, and the people would forget ; they
would get in again. But in the meantime the natural
sequence, the watering after the planting, would be
wholly interrupted. It would be impossible to follow
the various girls who would be married and sent to
other places before the village would open again. The
increase that follows true planting and watering seemed
projected into a far-away future. " 0 Lord of the
Harvest ! we count upon Thee to water Thine own seeds
Thyself," they prayed : " we wanted to be Thy watering-
pot, but we may not be even that. Let Thine own rain
fall on Thy seeds."
And yet, though they prayed so, they could not help
sorrowing. Those who have learned to love their own
generation cannot rest while that generation passes
unblessed. People tell us to be patient, and read us
homilies on patience. We do indeed need the patience of
God. " We will remember the years of the right hand
of the Most High." But platitudes, however kindly
offered, are as sawdust to hearts thirsty to see souls
saved, not afterwards, but now. We could say all the
nice-sounding things ourselves ; they do not comfort us.
We go to our Lord for sympathy. We find He under-
190 "HOLD ME ON WITH A STEADY PACE"
stands. " When He was come near, He beheld the city,
and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even
thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace ! " Thou, even thou : thou, and not
another.
"0 my God,
Thus let me weep at times and sigh to Thee,
Holding Thy feet ; not desolate myself ;
But for the desolate in every land :
Thus let me pray, embracing Thy dear cross,
For evsry banished soul — Thy banished ones
And mine."
Of the three workers, the one who had been the most
in earnest about the Village of the Temple was now the
most utterly broken-hearted. She came home crying
bitterly the evening they heard about Beautiful's death,
and she threw herself down beside me and buried her
face in my lap. " 0 Amma, Amma ! I never knew
how it could hurt ! " She was hurt all over, soul and
body, and for a time lost that elasticity of spirit which
helps us through our hurts. Then we feared for her
lest she should lose tone. A change in the kind of
work arranged for her saved her from that, and the
healing touch of the Man of Sorrows, who understood
her, put all right again. But as we lived through it with
her we realised that if these young converts are to become
soldiers strong to endure, someone must hold on for them
long after baptism is passed: God hold us on with a
steady pace.
CHAPTER XXV
Darkened Windows
WE have just returned from visiting Beautiful's
mother. That house, with the usual illogical
logic of the Old-world Indian village, is open
to us though the others are all shut. Mother and
daughters received us affectionately, let us share their
grief with them, let us sit with our hands in theirs, and
mourn with them. The daughters, Beautiful's sisters,
had stopped weeping a fortnight ago. The mother's
heart weeps longest. She wept on as if, in the language
of the East, her eyes were fountains of tears, and always
she ended with a sob that cut one's very heart, " Oh, my
blossoming bud ! my lotus flower ! If only your head
could have lain in my lap, and I could have tonded you
myself, I could have borne to let you go. But it was
not so, it was not so."
" It is no use to try to comfort her," said the daughters,
when we tried, " see, her heart is closed against comfort.
The dropping of words is as moonlight on stone. There
is no more comfort ever for her. There is none in our
religion." And when we tried to open the comfort of
ours to them, they said, " All we have left to us now is
our own religion." Words did indeed seem useless, and
191
192 DARKENED WINDOWS
the sight of that sorrow that would not be comforted
left us too sorrowful for words.
Evening was darkening the plain as we crossed it for
home. We were all feeling heavy-hearted because of the
perplexing way in which might had conquered right in a
recent case in Palamcottah. A Hindu girl who had been
taught in her own house, had waited patiently till she
believed herself of age to become a Christian. Then she
had come to the mission-house for protection, and had been
received by our comrades there. The parents did their
best, but could not persuade her to return home. Then
they brought a charge against the missionaries, which
was tried by the District magistrate, and thrown out as
false. The girl's faith and courage, through all the
painful ordeal of giving evidence in court, bore witness
to her sincerity. Then the relatives filed a Civil suit.
While the trial was proceeding, a crowd collected about
the Court-house. When the missionaries and the
girl came out, they were overpowered, and she was
carried off by force. For three days it was known
that she held out. On the fourth day she gave in.
On the evening of that day, she was produced before
the magistrate. She was willing then to go back
with the man to whom in the interval she had been
married. This in barest outline is the story which to
live through has meant much. " Is Satan too strong ? "
the girls asked wistfully. " She bore so much before
she gave in. Does he conquer everywhere ? Why
does God allow such things to happen ? " Everything
in us asks why ?
" The secret things belong unto the Lord."
THE SECRETS OF GOD 193
Then a deeper silence fell upon us. Beautiful's face,
and her mother's grief, and the face of that con-
vert girl, and our dear comrades' grief — these differing
things all mingled together to trouble us. The secrets
of God seemed to press all about us. All round us
stretched the plain, reaching away into dimness like the
dimness of an unknown land dark with those secrets.
For question leads off into question ; there is no end
to it ; and " Oft oppressive unto pain becomes the riddle
of the earth." And the ways of God and the ways of
the devil seem to become confused, till everything is a
bewilderment, and all life just a labyrinth with the clue
lost long ago. There is torture in the too persistent
" Why ? " There is torment in the questions that
spring upon us from the blackness of second causes :
" the dark enigma of permitted wrong " is terribly
intense. And it faces us sometimes so nearly, and it
lashes us with the sharpness of thoughts that are like
whips.
" What I do them knowest not now ; but thou
shalt know hereafter."
A text taken out of its context, but a text that finds
place in the greater context of life, it spoke to us then
with a voice that was not void of power. We remembered
how little we knew ; we are like horses in training,
running in circumscribed circles, thinking short-reaching
thoughts. Beyond our utmost reach sweeps God's great
thought-horizon. Sometime, somewhere, we shall under-
stand, and even if we never might, it could make no real
difference ; we know enough of our God to know all
must be well.
13
194 DARKENED WINDOWS
"I would rest
My head upon Thine, while Thy healing hand*
Close covered both my eyes beside Thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing
And all lay quiet, happy, and suppressed."
Not to our guardian angel, but to the Lord of all the
angels we said it, each in our own way. " 0 troubled
and bearer of burdens, He answered," so the Tamil reads,
" come to Me ; I will cool your weariness." Not, I will
answer your questions, but — " I will give you rest."
The more we experience the heart-rest Jesus gives,
the more we come to know Him as a personal near
Friend, the more it grieves us to see so many people
going on without Him. For the moment leave aside the
sin of heathendom. Think only of its sorrow. Think of
these lovable people, who are so kind and human, so like
ourselves in capacity to suffer, going on, ever on, without
the one thing which is everything to us. If Hinduism has
a word of comfort for the mourner, that word has not
reached the villages where most of its millions live. We
are welcome now in all the towns and villages surround-
ing us, except in the few where something has for the
moment alarmed the people, as in Beautiful's village.
They seem to love us ; we are often sorry because they
care for us so much, and not at all for our Master. We
want to be transparent windows through which they
will see Jesus. When they stop and look at us we feel
we are somehow clouding the glass. This intimacy with
the people of almost all castes often brings us into close
touch with them in their sorrows ; and we have been
INDIAN PATIENCE 195
allowed to spend hours in the secluded women's quarters,
listening to their life stories, sharing in their troubles.
This has given us a rare opportunity to discover the best
and the worst there is to know. The best, perhaps, is
the marvellous patience of the people in their pain. You
never hear murmuring. It is fate : resignation is virtuous,
is the general impression. The worst, where sorrow is
in question, is the heartless indifference sometimes en-
gendered by this cold creed, and the utter absence of
true comfort at all times.
South Indian life, as seen from outside, is cheerful.
By comparison English life is sombre, like the drab of its
clothes in comparison with our vivid reds, or the grey
of its atmosphere in contrast to our clear blue. But
truth lies in and under, not on the top of things. Look
in and under in India and you see this :
" Can you give me back my sight ? " She was a
middle-aged woman, grown old too soon. She was
poor, but her caste was exclusive, and she sat gathered
up in a tight bunch lest my dress should touch her's
as I sat on the narrow verandah beside her. She
had crept out of the dark room behind, a few minutes
earlier, drawn by the hope of help. Only a poor middle-
aged woman, with nothing romantic or pathetic about
her, quietly waiting for the call that would tell her we
had come. I looked at her a minute before I sat down
beside her, and I knew I was looking at one who had
sorrowed uucomforted.
She told me all about it in a voice that was all mono-
tone. " I gave my husband to death. He died. I gave
my ten children to death, and they died. One by one I
196 DARKENED WINDOWS
saw them die. These eyes saw them fade and die.
They did not die as little ones. No ; I nourished them
and cherished them, and each had grown up tall and
strong, when, one by one, they went from me, and my
arms had to let them go. And then I sat in my house
and wept. I had nothing to do but weep. So my
eyes have lost their power to see, and alone, alone, I am
growing blind. Can you give me back my sight ? "
One could see that she dreaded blindness with a dread
unspeakable, and the loneliness was overwhelming her.
There was fear in her face, and such entreaty, and yet
she spoke so patiently, even the passion of appeal had no
impatience in it. She had two terrible swollen sores,
each bad enough to make her ill ; but when I noticed
them, she said, " Oh, never mind ! They are nothing to
me. What is pain and what are sores to one who is
growing blind ? "
The neighbours had gathered in little groups and
listened while we talked ; now they began to talk together
to me. " She has sat for years alone in the dark ! " " She
only tastes food once a day ! " " She never eats proper
curry and rice ! " " She never, no never ceases from
tears ! " " Never a day but she weeps many tears, and
the tears have dissolved her eyes ! "
As they spoke, the tears ran down her cheeks. She
wiped them away with her old torn cloth, and looked out
across the sunny street where the children of others
played, and she strained her eyes as she looked at them,
as if she almost hoped to see her own ten playing there.
And then she looked up and clasped her hands, and held
them high above her head. " Alone among the people I
A SKY WITHOUT A MOON 197
sit and weep, and things are growing dim to me, and I
am growing blind ! " Then, breaking off, she held up
her hands as if in eager but mute appeal to the distant,
deaf, and pitiless power she thought of as her god.
To be blind and to be lonely — without Jesus ! It was
more than one could bear to think of for anybody. That
so very many are blind and lonely — without Jesus — does
not make it the less sorrowful for one of the many, and
what we may not realise as we think of the many,
becomes real indeed as we look at the one. I looked
at this woman now — the thin form, thin with fasting,
and the sores, fruit of that fasting, and the eyes, worn
out with weeping — those years had left their mark. And
I leaned my head against the pillar and turned my face
away, and tried not to let them see how much I cared.
But they saw, and their exclamations told her ; and
with such a loving gesture, as if she would have thrown
her arms round me, only her caste rules withheld her, she
besought me not to trouble, not to have a thought about
her. " For, indeed, I am not worth it. I am suffering
for my sin." (She meant the sin of some previous birth.)
" Joy and grief are a whirling wheel. Who can stay
what has to be ? The fate written in one's head is
hidden by one's hair, but it is written, who can reverse
it ? As a sky without a moon am I, a sore without a
salve. It is my fate. It is my fate." Then she stopped
and looked tenderly towards me, and said, " Oh, Amma !
trouble not for me. Have I not myself shed tears
enough ? Let none be shed for me ! "
I suppose it is well for us that we do not, as we put
it, " feel everything." The feeling faculty within us
198 DARKENED WINDOWS
seems to be usually overspread with a sort of merciful
dulness, but sometimes it is as if it were skinned, and
we do feel. I think if you had been there that day you
would have felt this — to see her so suffering, to hear her
trying to comfort you.
I tried to arrange for her to come in and have her
eyes attended to, but caste interfered. And even if
she could have come it is doubtful if much could have
been done. Her eyes looked, as the women said, as if
they had been " dissolved."
She listened wistfully as I told her about Jesus, but I
think her mind had no room for any thoughts save those
which had filled it for so long.
And so an hour passed, and she was weak with long
fasting and sitting in darkness, and the pain she counted
as nothing overcame her, and she crept back into the
little windowless room which opened off the verandah,
and lay down on a mat spread in the corner, and we left
her there alone.
A few weeks later we went again. She was some-
where toiling and worshipping ; for a sudden desperate-
ness had seized her, and the calmness had passed, the
people said. We waited till late, and she returned
spent and weary, but loving still. " Dear Amma," she
said, as we told her again of the only comfort, " I have
but one thing left to me ; I have been bereft of all but it.
Would you ask me to do that which you know would
spoil the one thing left to me ? You forget I have still
my caste : I have kept it all these years. Would you
have me believe your Jesus Lord, and lose the one
thing left to me ? " And then reproachfully she turned
NOT COMFORTED 199
those almost sightless eyes on me, and went into her
house.
0 thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not com-
forted, have we come too late ? Are life's fair colours
forever covered over, its windows of agate darkened
forever ? Oh for the Voice to sound through the
silence, for the Face to shine through the dimness, for
the comforting touch of Christ !
And the question that came to me as we left her, was
the question that never comes less urgently although it
comes so often. The answer to that question lies between
each one of us and God.
CHAPTER XXVI
Graves which appear not
TO such mourners life is a great waste place, and the
Lord who comforts all our waste places is a God
unknown. There is a call in this. There is some-
thing stronger than a call in what underlies it everywhere.
The subsoil of most non-Christian lands is largely made
of graves.
It is possible to lose all sense of truth, that stern
uncompromising thing, in a kind of worshipping rhapsody
over that which appeals to sentiment, and to love of the
mysterious. Such rhapsodies are in fashion now. We
are almost ashamed of the crude thoughts of years ago ;
like the crude woodcuts in our childhood's Missionary
books, those thoughts were rather caricatures than
seriously truthful. Or we etherealise where we cannot
deny. Our pictures showed us Jagannath cars and flam-
ing piles, and babes flung into crocodiles' jaws. Granted
there were such tragedies, the modern voice says softly, it
was only love at its noblest, offering its all to its Love ;
and the glorious ecstasy carried the soul through pain. So
we sit at the feet of the old gods created to satisfy at once
both extremes in the nature of man. We forget the source
of the highest in the ancient books. We explain away
200
UNDER THE JASMINE TOWER 201
the lowest. We wrap the result of our fine thoughts'
work in a shining web of words. And we show this web
of bewilderment. And we say, Look ; this is Indian
thought. This is India seen at last, understood by us at
last. All who ever went before were too dull to under-
stand. They had no sympathy, no intuition. We are
the people who know.
And straight through it all, as if a hand had torn at
the dew-bespangled web and shown the dead fly inside,
come voices from India's own people, who have escaped
from the snare :
" Dost tliou blame
A soul that strives but to see plain, speak true,
Truth at all hazards ? Oh, this false for real,
This emptiness which feigns solidity —
Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black —
When shall we rest upon the thing itself,
Not on its semblance ? Soul — too weak forsooth
To cope with fact — wants fiction everywhere !
Mine tires of falsehood : truth at any cost."
The Panditu Rainabai Dongre Medhavi is at Agra.
She has seen, as all visitors see, those dreams of delight,
the poems in marble there. She asks to be shown the
dungeons underneath one of the Pleasure towers. The
guide denies the existence of such places. A fee refreshes
his memory. He opens a trap-door on one side of the
palace, lets her in, shows her the many underground
rooms where the queens who had incurred the king's
displeasure were confined, tortured, starved. And he
lights a torch and takes her to the further end of the
prison. They are under the Jasmine tower. The room
is dark, octagonal ; in the centre is a pit, over the pit is a
beam elaborately carved. Does the irony of it strike
202
you ? Our gallows are not carved. From that beam the
queens were hung. Into that pit their bodies fell. Then
a stream of water caught them, carried them out to the
Jumna. The crocodiles did the rest.
There are many voices talking in the Jasmine tower.
A single voice is speaking from the dungeon underneath :
" / leg of my Western sisters not to be satisfied with
looking on the outside beauty of the grand philosophies, and
not to be charmed with hearing the long and interesting
discourses of our educated men, but to open the trap-doors
of the great monument of ancient Hindu intellect, and
enter into the dark cellars where they will see the real
working of tJie philosophies which they admire so much."
"The real working of the philosophies which they
admire so much." These words, set in the thought of
that underground room, and beam, and pit, came to me
with forcefulness, when one day I trod on a grave which
appeared not.
South India, as compared with North, is manifestly
religious. The huge temples attest the fact. Benares
is Hindu India's heart, but Benares' chief temple " is to
the great temples of Tanjore, Madura, and Tinnevelly,
what a small village church is to St. Paul's Cathedral."
Everywhere here we have Hinduism at its grandest,
stateliest, and most imposing. Its holy places are most
holy. No alien may, as in the North, approach the
sacred symbol ; great stone galleries and corridors, quad-
rangular courts and pillared halls guard the approaches
to the room, where, as the Hindu believes, the deity is
enshrined. Here, then, if anywhere, we should see the
philosophy behind all this, wrought out in something
HOW DOES IT WORK ? 203
worthy such expression. Here, uninfluenced by Islam,
uninjured by change of dynasty, we have Hinduism,
Hindu thought, free to work as it will. How does it
work ?
We had pitched our tents in a mango grove close to
one of the southern towns, and were spending our days
with the people. We had come to the last day, and
were visiting in a quiet street, when we noticed an old
lady of distinction who listened as one who understood.
She was beautiful to look upon. A beautiful old face
is seldom seen in South India ; perhaps the hot years
tire the beauty out. The old lady fascinated me. She
sat quietly listening, one fine hand fingering her rosary,
brown berries set in chased gold, her eyes fixed upon me.
I found myself speaking only for her, and when I had
finished I asked her if we might go home with her.
She hesitated. The women laughed. But eventually
she led the way through blazing sunshine into a large
courtyard, and through it into the dim half light of an
old-fashioned Indian house. " Ah ! what sun ! It
scorches one's very marrow," she said, and sighed with
relief as we reached the cool.
Her house seemed to fit the old lady, who stood on
the threshold for a moment, her white widow's dress
showing against the soft shadowiness within. The
floor was of brown tiles ; the walls were of dull
red. The doors and lintels and all the pillars were
wonderfully carved. Polished brass vessels stood in
rows in one of the passages. There was none of the
untidy litter of an ordinary house and courtyard. All
was orderly.
204 GRAVES WHICH APPEAR NOT
In the outer verandah a young man wrapped in a
seagreen scarf was chanting poetry. Another, swinging
on a board hung by chains from the roof, was listening
intently. Each wore the Vishnu mark. There were no
children to be seen, and again the unusual orderliness
of the place struck me as we followed the old lady into
the women's apartment, the home of the house. There
a servant appeared with a trayful of betel, the usual
offer of courtesy. Plantains and limes were given to
us. Then two young girls came forward and put garlands
round our necks. We wondered how they happened to
have all these things ready.
My fellow-worker of that afternoon had been recently
converted. As nominal Christians, she and her husband
had lived for years among the Hindus without ever
visiting them like this. The old lady knew her, and
not understanding why she came now, listened with a
curious keenness, as if she were suspending judgment
till the cause was laid out before her. After she had
heard about her visitor's new found joy, she asked us to
sing. We began at once with,
" What can wash away my sin ?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
As we broke off to explain the verses, Tamil fashion,
the girls interest quickened, and they asked questions
which so engrossed us that we did not notice the
change in the old face beside us, till suddenly I saw
it. That face was like our mountain side, with the
storm-cloud rolling down. " Stop ! stop ! " and the voice
was like the rising of the wind as we have it on the
"WHEN HE is COME" 205
plain, rushing and deepening. " Stop ! Who told you
to sing that here ? I know it well ! I know it well !
And your doctrine is thoroughly known to me, and I
will have none of it here ! Listen ! Listen ! Listen, I
say, I will preach your doctrine ! " And she poured
forth a rapid summary of the parable of the prodigal
son. " There, is not that your doctrine ? Do not I well
know whither it leads ? And I will have none of it here ! "
At the first sound of the hymn the chanting had
ceased in the outer verandah ; now a laugh broke in
upon us, and the girls slipped away, as the two men
sauntered into the room and stood surveying us. The
old lady turned to them hurriedly. I can see that poor
face now — wrath, fear, entreaty, defiance, such a mingling
of emotions found expression there.
" Yes, I brought her," she was saying ; " woe is me
that I did it. She shall go ! But how could I know
she would sing that song ? Ah ! be not angry with me.
I want not her doctrine. I have said it : she shall go.
See, she is going even now ! "
The men did not answer. They talked to each other
in undertones. We were puzzled. Why thif: outburst ?
We were ready to go, but the old lady took no notice
of us. Lulled for the moment, she sang to herself :
" What can wash away my sin ?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
We kept quiet. We were in the presence of some-
thing we did not understand. But God understood.
His Spirit was there. Our whole thought then was to
efface ourselves.
206 GRAVES WHICH APPEAR NOT
At last she looked at me, and answered as if I had
spoken to her. It was as if a power compelled the
truth to come and show itself.
" My life is all one sin," she said, " one long black
sin. The thing I think, and speak, and do is sin. I
know it. Oh, I know it. But," and the voice hardened,
" what is that to you ? If it is against your religion
it is not against mine. My doctrine provides for the
thing I do. It is holy, yea, holy." Then again the
voice changed, fell to a whisper. " But it is sin : it is
sin ; all sin." When He is come He will convince of
sin. He had come. She was convinced. No need of
words of ours.
She stopped. The men listened amazed. They saw
the tempest-tossed beautiful face. They looked at each
other and at us, but, respecting the gesture that asked
for silence, neither of them spoke.
The face was hidden now. " And darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters."
But the men grew impatient. She rose as if to go,
then praying that we might speak in line with the awful,
gentle Voice she had been listening to, I pleaded with
her, and she softened for a moment. But not so easily
are souls won. " Aiyo ! Aiyo ! I have heard enough.
Too much have I heard for my peace of mind. Go ! go !
What I do is not sin in our Hindu religion. I am kind
to the girls ; I call them my daughters. Go ! "
And as we went we heard the men laugh, and the
hymn that had stirred her so strongly rang out in bitter
raillery :
"THE SNAKE NESTS IN THE ALTAR-STONE" 207
"What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
It was all most startling ; she seemed to know so
much. Had " heaven's light but revealed a track where-
by to crawl away from heaven " ? " My doctrine pro-
vides for the thing I do. It is holy. What I do is not
sin in our Hindu religion. I am kind to the girls ; I call
them my daughters." As she said it, we knew where we
were : in a house on the way to hell, going down to the
chambers of death. But what she said was true ; what
she was doing was " holy, yea holy," judged by the very
code that took shape in the Temple outside.
Some will find this incredible, unjustifiable, narrow,
ignorant, intolerant ; in short, just like a missionary
devoid of imagination. There are those now who couple
(God forgive us if the mere mention of such blasphemy is
irreverent) the name of the Holy Child Jesus with one
or other of the Hindu incarnations — Vishnu's incarna-
tion as Krishna, for example. " Krishna the Indian
Christ," they even dare to write, little knowing the
inwardness of anything so lightly touched. All students
of Indian literature acknowledge that the true and the
beautiful are found in it. But should it be concealed that
in the name of Krishna that house stands, that in his
name stand many similar houses, and streets full of
houses, that in his name the city of his reputed birth is
to-day a polluted city ? " My doctrine provides for the
thing I do."
" She misrepresented her doctrine, dragged its thought
in the dust of her low desire, missed its meaning com-
pletely " ; so some would tell us. Who knows best ? She
208 GRAVES WHICH APPEAR NOT
lives at the heart of Krishna's things as no foreigner
ever could. She holds to what she says ; her doctrine
cloaks the sin of her life, nay, rather crowns it, consecrates
it. It is not sin.
A thought reveals itself in words. There are certain
evil words engraved with iron style on the palm-leaf copies
of ancient books. Words cut into the texture of a leaf
when it is young cannot be erased when it is old ; you
cannot rub out a cut ; the preservative saffron smeared
over the leaf darkens into the lettering. Now comes
the philosopher, considers this unpleasant fact, feels its
incompatibility with his thought about Indian Thought.
Such thought as these words indicate is a blot on the
page of his philosophy. So he blows upon the blot, and
lo, it vanishes ! and floating out as from a cloud of new
and mystical conceptions, conveyed in most subtle and
exquisite language, we see emerge and evolve an Idea ;
these things, to put it boldly, bad things, said to be
practised by Krishna, " are to be explained allegorically,
and symbolise the longing of the human soul for union
with the Supreme." Could anything be more natural ?
Not what those bad words seem to mean, but what
we say they are to mean, is their meaning, says the
philosopher.
But most of India's people are not philosophers, only
simple people like ourselves. To them words mean just
what they say, as in the main they do to us. And in
this case the words are clear. The thought behind the
words is clear. As our god did, so may we do ; and as
he did it, let us now deify the doing.
This is the real working of the philosophy which
"BuT INWARDLY . . . ." 209
some admire so much. Indian thought, like Indian
character, is a study of contrast. The word " home "
does not exist in our Tamil language, but perhaps nowhere
is there more family affection. This contrast, or possi-
bility of contrast, meets one at every turn. Things
glorious and base, delicately sensitive and inexpressibly
coarse, jostle one another, or lie alongside, everywhere.
Take a single illustration from India's literature. Bead
parts of one of the epics ; all that is noble and very lovely
blossoms as the lotus. Read other parts of the same
poem — but you could not, — and it would be as if you
had plunged down into the slime at the lotus root.
Who was the woman ? What was her story ? Who
were the girls ? How had she got them ? Oh, the un-
answered questions of a single afternoon !
Other questions come to be answered sometimes :
" What a pity it is to meddle with so ancient an order
of things. After all, is there much difference between
heathendom and Christendom ? Regrettable things occur
at home, as of course you know. Probably their own
religion is suited to the people of India."
It is true that the order of things is ancient But if
the ancient is invariably best, why are we Christians
to-day ? As to the second contention, suppose it were
possible to prove England on a level with India (which
it is not) as regards practice, there would still be this
difference in ideal. In England, when sin is exposed,
the conscience of the nation speaks. Here it is drugged,
mute. If ever a voice breaks the silence, it will be
found to come from a quarter where some Christian
influence, direct or reflex, is at work. In England, as in
14
210 GRAVES WHICH APPEAR NOT
all lands even nominally Christian, there is such a thing
as reticence ; the very daylight shames needless allusion
to pitch. Here, nothing is too unseemly to discuss ; life
holds no sanctuary. We have vultures on these hills.
You see a shadow on the grass, faint, undefined. You
look up and see the form of a great bird, black in the
blue. It swoops down in circles, drops heavily beside a
dead buffalo, and gorges. But though it is so big and
gross, the fall of its shadow, as it wheels, is light as a
breath on the grass. When one tries to describe the
contrast between a land where the nation's ideal is
Christ, the pure and holy, and a land to whose favourite
divinity that pitch, the thought of which defiles, is meat
and drink, and pleasure, then one feels that words coined
in the mint of a Christian language can never be truly
expressive. The blackest words are too pale to paint
even the faint undefined shadow of that strong contrast's
shape.
Verily, there is a difference. It is caused by the
difference in the Faith that informs the life. No other
than the Faith of the Lord Jesus Christ can possibly be
suited to those whose chief end, even as ours, is nothing
less than to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.
How can we, who " with Angels and Archangels, and with
all the company of heaven, laud and magnify His glorious
name, evermore praising Him and saying, Holy, holy,
holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of
Thy glory. Glory be to Thee, 0 Lord, most high " — how
can we be indifferent to the fact that half the world is
still shut out from its share in that majestic song ? Can
we sing on and not care ?
IF? 211
"Oh, if our brother's blood cry out to us,
How shall we meet Thee who hast loved us all,
Thee whom we never loved, not loving him ? "
" God's in His heaven. All's right with the world ; "
two friends met on a hill top and said it. A town lies
round the base of the hill. The level of red-tiled roofs
is pierced by the spires of a mosque and a temple
cupola. If those roofs had been made of glass instead
of tiles, if mosque and temple and the houses close about
them had been built of glass all through, and the two
friends could have looked down, and through, and in,
would they have said so ? Yes, and no. Yes — for the
Lord reigneth ; no facts can touch that fact. No — for
the prince of this world, though judged, has for the time
being power ; and though these towns are so sunshiny, so
full of the careless joyousness of a people dwelling at ease,
there are graves which appear not. And we who walk
upon them are sometimes not aware of them till we have
passed.
CHAPTER XXVII
"Dagon must Stoop"
RAVES and gardens : Weights and Overweights.
\J[ Sometimes we pass backwards and forwards from
grave to garden ; then the scales are poised just
evenly. Sometimes the grave appears to encroach upon
the garden ; then life's equilibrium becomes disturbed.
Sometimes what we thought was a grave blossoms into
a garden ; then there is an Overweight of Joy.
We were travelling home one evening, after a week's
itineration, when we saw a group of people standing
on the steep slope which led from a village we were
passing to the river we were skirting. The men stood
in silence. The women wailed. Then they stopped,
uplifted long arms, and tossed them as if parting from
their dead.
You cannot live for unbroken years of intercourse
with the East without becoming in some measure
Easternised. Your ear is filled with the sound of the
East, and its sights are in your eyes. You have
breathed of its atmosphere, drunk of its spirit; what
appeals to it appeals to you. You find yourself thinking
its thoughts with it, instinctively, unconsciously; and
on some simple lines of thought, at least, the grave old
212
GRAVE 213
East thinks like a child. So we did what a child would
have done — stopped the bandy, listened, looked, felt the
appeal in the things sung, shared the hour's life with the
people there.
Presently the little knot of white and brown
straightened out. There was a burst of wailing from
the women. It ceased as the men streamed down the
bank. The last light of day fell full on them and the
burden that they bore. It was a grey-haired woman.
The head lay on a mass of flowers ; flowers crowned it,"
drew round it, fell in long lines of colour down to the
feet. But the dead face looked awful in the red glow ;
as it passed I remembered where I had seen it last, and
saw, as if lit by that red glow, a stone verandah, an
old woman sitting thereon, repeating Tamil poetry, a
child in the street below, jumping up and down, and
laughing as she quoted poetry.
This dead woman was that child's grandmother. She
had trained her eldest daughter, as her mother had
trained her, for the service of the gods. She had trained
and given her grandchild to the service of the gods.
Her whole long life from its very start had been bent
towards evil of the darkest sort. She had left that little
once-innocent child to carry on her work. The thought
of it was unbearable. The horror of contact with the
unclean was upon us. We tried to turn full from it.
" Drive on," we said to the bandy-man. The light faded
in the west, the clouds rolled up and blotted out the
stars. Then from the river bank two tongues of yellow
flame forked up where they were burning her. The
bandy-man drove faster.
214 "DAGON MUST STOOP"
Before the ashes of that woman were cold on the
bank, there was another funeral by the same river-side.
The Village of the Grove is built of mud or sand.
Eound it is a belt of jungle. Its people are yeomen,
and accustomed to grapple with adverse circumstances,
bare sand, scrub, and the like. Work in such places
has an interest of its own.
Among the first there to respond to the teaching was
a nominal Christian of some position. We call him
Lighted Face now, because of the way the light shines
out. Soon after his conversion he began to try to win
others ; and one of the first his brightened life attracted
to enquire, was a young Hindu who for several years
had been seeking the forgiveness of sins.
We so seldom meet anyone who feels his sins enough
to seek forgiveness, that his story was a rare delight,
and I give it as he told it to us before his baptism :
" I felt a burden like a great weight fastened to me,
and I could not get it off. I went to my father, who
had long before built a shrine wherein he worships
every day. I asked him, ' Father, what must one do
to get one's sins forgiven ? ' Said my father, ' Learn a
thousand stanzas of our ancient Tamil poetry, then
your sins will be forgiven.' I learned the thousand
stanzas, and many more than those. I meditated
on the wisdom contained in them. But my sins were
not forgiven. Then I went to my father again ; I told
him the burden was heavy, as heavy as before. He
advised me to find an ascetic and propound my question
to him. I found one and pressed him hard. Driven
to tell the truth, he confessed to me that he knew his
GARDEN 215
own sins were not forgiven. Then I was indignant.
Those who profess to know, know nothing. And I
discontinued my search."
Someone gave him a Bible about this time. But the
giver was one who beat out life's music harshly ; the
young man heard the discord. He hardly opened the
book.
Then he met Lighted Face ; the light drew him. The
two men talked often together. Lighted Face persuaded
him to listen outside the village prayer-room while
hymns were sung, and the way he had sought in
vain was shown. A chorus, repeatedly sung, charmed
him, and he decided to find out who this Saviour so
often mentioned really was, and what He could do.
After the meeting Lighted Face led him to Mr. Walker's
tent. He left it a free man : " I knew I was free from
the burden."
After this, more nominal Christians and more Hindus
were converted, and gradually a band of earnest young
men gathered round Lighted Face, who proved to have
powers of leadership folded up within him. The little
band grew month by month, and became keon to win
others.
The stir among the Christians led to a corresponding
stir among the Hindus. They sent one of their number
to be trained to read and explain the Eamayana.
Evening by evening they met under an awning in the
village square, and listened for hours to the singsong
chant, broken by translation into colloquial Tamil. The
Christians then organised public Bible readings on the
same plan ; the work went on in interesting and purely
216 "DAGON MUST STOOP"
Eastern fashion, and others, chiefly young men, were
won.
Among the most vehement opposers was a lad of
eighteen or twenty, notably strong in badness, and im-
possible to approach. He came to open-air meetings
and public Bible readings and broke them up. He
excelled in all sorts of crude wickedness. He feared
nobody, and cared for nothing. So when one afternoon
in the middle of an open-air meeting the whisper was
passed, " That boy is here," we prayed, and the message
went straight to his heart.
His baptism day stands out marked. Baptism with
us is very simple. We all go down to the nearest
water, and stand on the bank or shore while those about
to be baptized witness in a few words to their Saviour.
Then the one who is going to give baptism walks into
the water, and those who are to be baptized follow
him out, till the water is deep enough to cover them
when they stoop as they do in their ordinary bathing.
Nothing could be less distracting or more significant
of the inner meaning of baptism. It is a thought
clothed in a transparent deed. Out in the open air
somehow formality seems shy of spoiling the service.
It all feels living and real.
The nearest water to the Village of the Grove is the
famous Copper-coloured river, counted sacred here. On
the opposite bank a Brahman town brought its groups
of spectators, clusters of women on the flat housetops,
and groups of men on the steps leading down to the
river. All the Christians came with the five new con-
verts, and we stood together on the sand on the edge of
GRAVE OR GARDEN? 217
the sunset-tinted water. All nature seemed in sympathy.
There was such a radiance of beauty in the light and the
colour on the river. It was as if God were looking
down and shining a smile through to us, and we could
not help looking up and smiling back to Him.
For some months all went well. The Village of the
Grove does not expel converts, but it persecutes them.
The boy's conduct was so changed that the people
despaired of ordinary means of coercion, and tried
others ; he gave way, only a little, but enough to dull
the edge of his joy and his confidence in God.
There is an Indian story of a king whose life was so
blameless that no way could be found by which an evil
spirit who wanted to ruin him could enter in. At last,
one day when he was bathing, the king left one small
spot unwashed. It was only the size of a thorn-tip, but
it was all the demon asked. The story says he entered
J J
by it, and marred the good king's life. Some minute
point was compromised by the boy. The Hindus boasted
their victory. Then the boy sickened with fever, and his
relations took possession of him, and would not let the
Christians near. " He is ours now. His her.rt is ours.
You will see no more of him," they said.
The Grove villagers do nothing by halves. The
Christians knew that great pressure would be brought
to bear upon the boy. He would need their help, they
knew, and they could not go to him. A week or two
passed, and most unsatisfactory accounts of his condition
reached them. He had yielded to his people. He
would die a true Hindu. A day or so later he died.
There are lines in Milton's Samson Agonistes which
218 "DAGON MUST STOOP"
often invigorate us. They are too strong to bear
abbreviation, so I quote in full. Samson is speaking to
his father before the last scene when he pulls the house
down upon the Philistines :
"All the contest is now
'Twixt God and Dagon. Dagon hath presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,
His deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure,
Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked ;
But will arise, and His great name assert:
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him
Of all these boasted trophies won on me,
And with confusion blank his worshippers."
Manoah answers :
"With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words
I as a prophecy receive ; for God,
Nothing more certain, will not long defer
To vindicate the glory of His name
Against all competition, nor will long
Endure it, doubtful whether God be Lord,
Or Dagon."
We heard at once of the boy's death. There was
nothing to show that God had conquered. It seemed
far more probable that Dagon having won so much had
won all.
But on the evening of the same day the Hindus went
to the Christians and said, " Take away his body. Bury
it with your Christian rites. We could do nothing with
him. He belongs to your God and to you." They
admitted they had wrestled with him up to the last.
Weak, dying, he had struggled hard against them. They
"HlS UNCONTROLLABLE INTENT " 219
had considered him defeated because he had given in at
first. They found, to their confusion, they had entered
lists with God. The Christians carried their brother
forth and buried him with singing.
We felt it good to know it. Naturally the relatives
would have suppressed the truth, which reflected no
glory upon Dagon. But they told the truth ; and we
who had sorrowed, hurt by the doubt, rejoiced when we
heard it. Perhaps somewhere there is a heart that is
troubled though it need not be, hurt by a doubt that
would pass if it knew all. We are children of limited
vision, often distorted vision. God may see a garden
where we only see a grave.
Sometimes two events or scenes are linked together
in one's mind by very force of contrast. Those two so
different funerals are like two pictures hung together in
the Picture room. When the woman with her silent
mouth seems to say hopeless things, the boy sings :
Dagon having overthrown Samson has entered lists with
God. Can we doubt as to the end of such a conflict ?
No smooth sayings can take away the fact of sin : the
woman's face is dark. But the boy : look on, look on
to the end. " The End crowns all."
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Spaces between
DAGON must stoop. " With him is an arm of flesh ;
but with us is the Lord our God to help us and
fight our battles." As the splendid sentence falls
we see as in a scroll unrolled the future history of the
world written in clear characters. And yet, to-day, if
we quietly contemplate a map and count the countries,
cities, towns, villages, so far as a map shows them, which
are tinder Dagon's dominion, those of us who have what
Lord Selborne recently called an unholy thirst for
statistics — of a somewhat different sort — will feel simply
and utterly appalled.
Life is full of questions : even here — where happily
much that perplexes it at home falls off like an encum-
bering garment — our uncomplicated day has its questions.
How is it, you ask yourself after studying things, so
far as a Western may, from an Eastern point of view —
how is it that everywhere the large East is being
cramped into grooves wrought in the narrow West ?
What is there of the Oriental in our manner or our
spirit ? Why have we so systematically quenched the
national, the natural ? What are we aiming at as a
Church ? What is our hope for the future of these
220
HAVE WE LOST IT? 221
people ? How are we training them to meet that hope ?
Was no pattern ever shown to us as to Moses on the
Mount ? Or if we had a pattern have we lost it ?
These last two questions came with persistency one
Sunday morning during mid-service, to one who for some
time had been out of the stream of English church life as
it flows now in the main. Have you ever found yourself
wondering, during such a service, what would happen if
suddenly the Lord Jesus Christ walked in ? Would His
simplicity shame our ceremonial, or His radiance surprise
our dulness ? Would the little child taught to notice
such things whisper to her mother, " How much better
dressed \ve are than He." Would another say, " Why
has everything stopped ? Were we not speaking to
Him before ? " Or would everything go on just as if He
were not there ? What would really happen, I wonder,
if Jesus came to church to-day ?
But beyond these questions lie others concerning the
unevangelised, and our relation to them. Try to evade
any one of these questions, and it follows you, lays a
detaining hand on your shoulder, wheels you round till
you front it again. There is no escape from it if you
think at all.
The South Indian plain to the east of the Ghauts is
as flat as land knows how to lie. To the west of the
mountains there is a garden that rises and dips and
spreads itself out in most refreshing fashion. Look at
Travancore from the heights, it is an undulating ocean
of green. There is not much green and no undulation
on the eastern side. In certain states of atmosphere it
is like a sheet of pink blotting-paper.
222 THE SPACES BETWEEN
Perpetual flatness has a curious effect upon the
undisciplined soul. It creates a sort of impatience, an
unreasonable feeling that somehow one must get up
somewhere, and look down on something. Sometimes
we yield to this animal instinct and bump across country
for one hot hour, and reach the rocks that have tumbled
down from the foothills, and scramble up one of them
high enough to command the plain, and revel in the
realisation that after months of crawling on it one has
not evolved into an insect, but is still a human being
with a sense to delight in the beauty of the world, and a
heart that can dance with the joy of living in it. Will
you climb the rock with us now, and share the pleasure
of the mountain view ; and then look through our eyes,
across the plain to the east, where the sky lies low on
the land ?
From the rock you see mountains rising almost sheer
for four or five thousand feet. Some slope finely, some
curiously. There is a single great round-headed block
of precipitous rock to the south. Sometimes the sky-
line is notched with rough-toothed granite. Sometimes
the fall of the hills suggests the quiet folds round
Derwentwater. There are forests climbing the ravines,
and out-jutting crags, and furrowed scarps. There is all
the familiar colouring of mountain scenery, enriched by
the tropical brilliance of atmosphere which accentuates
all colour. The plain upon which we look down at last,
with feelings of such satisfaction, offers contrast in that
round the rock foot it is dotted with the stiff myrtle
green of palmyra palm, and squares of emerald where
the young rice grows ; but on the whole it harmonises
THE FIRST TOWN 223
perfectly with the dominant colour note of the hills, blue
in all its varying tones, for its prevailing tint is a soft
terra-cotta, caused by the peroxide of iron in the soil
where it is not under cultivation. Close to the southern
mountain a little lakelet looks up at the hills and the
sky and doubles all the beauty. There is stillness on
the rock. Only the call of a shepherd boy, unseen in the
palm wood below, floats up tremulously. The vulgar,
and the noisy, and the petty ways of men seem very
far away.
We have the eloquent among us who can reel off
facts and figures till the very mind is giddy. " So-and-so
is above detail," says the admiring friend, as he listens to
another talk in broad sweeps of sentences, which mass
continents together in most masterly fashion.
But millions, however ingeniously manipulated, resolve
themselves into units when you come to deal with them.
Eventually the unit is the important thing. So let us
look at just three towns ; and lest even only three should
produce an indistinct impression, let us look at these
three towns as I saw them first, one in sunshine, one in
sunset, one in moonlight.
The first town lies in a pastorate where the Christians
are too few to evangelise one-tenth of their villages
and towns. Once in two years, if it can, the men's
Itinerating band goes round and preaches in the
village streets. The caste women, shut up in their
houses, or if free, too shy to go near men, are not much
reached by this. To the pastor's knowledge, no woman
has ever worked among the women there. We had
been invited to visit one who once heard the outline of the
224 THE SPACES BETWEEN
Crucifixion story read aloud from a Christian school-
book, which her boy had chanced upon in a friend's
house. Through the friend she found out about us, and
sent this word of appeal : " Where much food is, there
no hunger is ; where no food is, there is hunger." So,
thankfully we went.
Look at the town as you see it from the upper room
where for an hour we have had the joy of pouring out
living water upon a thirsty soul. She has gone down-
stairs at her husband's call. She will return presently.
While we wait, look out on the red roofs in the quiver
of noontide heat, on the shimmer of sunshine on the
palms, on the sparkle of the river at their roots.
Her voice sounds on the stairs. It sounds lovingly,
for she is speaking to her little sons ; but there is a note
of disappointment in it, and her face when you see it
has lost something, it has lost hope. She draws you to
the verandah that opens from the window. She points
down to the roofs and the river. "My husband says
he knows all about this religion. He says there never
has been a Christian in this town. There is no place for
a Christian in any house here. He says for me to listen
is treason to my caste. My caste would be disgraced
for ever if any of us became Christians."
But surely the conquering Light would penetrate if
it were brought to bear upon this town persistently and
patiently ? That is work which is not being done.
There is no one at present to do it.
It is evening when we reach the second town. We
are on our way to the third, and cannot stop. But
we sing as we pass through the streets ; sometimes a
THE SECOND TOWN 225
song carries far. As we drive through the Brahman
street, a thoroughfare here, and open to all, some little
schoolgirls run after the bandy, trying to pick up the
words. Thereat a man rushes out upon them, disperses
them, and orders us to drive faster. " Who wants
Christian singing in this street ? " The Temple gong
booms out " Who " ?
In one of the houses we are passing, some years ago
a boy was confined and guarded night and day. He
was beaten hard ; drugs were mixed with his food.
When he slept, Vishnu's mark was put on his forehead,
and the filthy water called holy, in which the idols had
been washed, was sprinkled upon him. He was treated
as an idiot, and a green paste, supposed to cure the
insane, was rubbed upon his head. One night his father
in great wrath took a knife, intending to stab him. " I
simply told him," he says, " the words of our Master,
' Fear not them that kill the body.' " Others interfered
then, and withheld the father from killing his son.
Violence having failed, it was proposed that a famous
magician from Travancore, " who could make one
paralysed, or truly insane, or possessed of a devil,"
should be sent for ; wicked stories were told to the boy,
in order to break down the gates of his will from
another side. His sister and a little niece whom he
dearly loved were brought to try to win him back.
They fell at his feet, and clung to him, and wept.
Orthodox Hindus, educated Hindus, and even a nominal
Christian were brought to try to subvert his faith. They
argued with him in vain. At last the father professed
to agree to his being a Christian, reading his Bible,
226 THE SPACES BETWEEN
praying, even attending church, if only he would consent
to wear the Vishnu mark, the trident on his forehead,
and the Brahman thread upon his shoulders. But God
gave it to him to detect the snare in that delusive
proposal, and braced him utterly to scorn it. After four
months of confinement and mental strain, the boy was
so reduced that it was thought he could not live long.
It was very hot weather, and the jailers themselves
found it irksome to keep guard in the little inner room ;
so, thinking he was too weak to escape, they allowed
him to sleep unfettered on the verandah. One early
morning, in the dark before the dawn, he felt as if an
angel awakened him out of his sleep. He rose up, knelt
clown, and prayed for strength to walk. He was sur-
rounded by people, but they did not wake. He dropped
silently down into the street ; strength came ; the morning
star, he says, was shining over his path. He ran through
the streets, across the plain eleven miles to the Mission-
house, and was safe.
How forceful the darkness seems, as one thinks over
such a story in the very town where it happened, and
might happen again to-day ; how, as if it were living and
wicked, it struggles to eclipse the light, and force it out
to shine elsewhere. The glory of sunset rests on the
temple tower, streams round the town, wraps it in
beauty; but the swiftly moving Eastern night is upon
us before we are out of reach of the rumble of the gong,
and the clang of the cymbal, and the rattle of the drum
from the temple ; and these sounds of Vishnu's worship
chase us out of the town.
The moon has risen when we reach the third town.
THE THIRD TOWN 227
You can see the central temple tower outlined dark and
sharp against the sky. The long streets stretch all
silver white, the palms that line the Brahman street are
like plumes of shining silver. It is all so purely silvery
that the very town seems silver-washed, and the people
in their white garments in the white light seem almost
other-earthly, too pure for earth. But look closer.
These many people who fill the streets at this late hour
are returning from a festival. Each man has a mark
on his brow. The moonlight shows it distinctly. It
is the print of Vishnu's foot. Our spirit is stirred
within us as we pass through the quiet crowd. Vishnu's
foot is everywhere. Next morning, when we ask about
the place, we hear that only two converts, young men,
have ever been known to come out as Christians. Both
found it impossible to live there afterwards. There is
no witness from within where that town is concerned.
The Christian traveller naturally wishes to see the
work that is being done. He is shown it and rejoices.
He is rarely found studying life as it is outside the
mission centre. The mind retains most vividly what the
eye has seen most frequently, and so we usually find
that the impression left upon the visitor is that India is
a land studded with mission stations, netted with organi-
zation, sprinkled with stars.
And yet, if guided by one who knew, he had gone a
little way from the beaten track, he would have seen many
a wide expanse of country where little or nothing worth
calling work is being done. He would have seen all his
eye could hold of the millions who are quite out of reach
of light, or else — and this is sadder still — strangely
228 THE SPACES BETWEEN
unaffected by the light in their vicinity. He would
have seen that we have hardly touched the thin fringe
of the great darkness.
But perhaps, if he talked chiefly with those whose
Missionary lot is cast on the inner side of the halo
that circles the star-clusters God has scattered through
this night, he would be puzzled by what seems contra-
diction in evidence. Those of us who live inside the
little Christian circle are usually so engrossed by its
many and pressing claims, that we are hardly likely
to see far beyond its borders. This explains much he
may hear. Let him, as we said, take a guide, and go
out beyond the familiar constellations, and wander awhile
in the spaces between. Then, if he has eyes to see, and
a heart to feel at all, he will find his very soul scored
with scars that never can be erased. God give us hearts
that will care more, and eyes that are clearer to see past
the edge of the halo rim, over the walls of our com-
pounds, away up through His wide world, till we feel as
we never felt before the overwhelming enormousness of
the work that is not being done, in places where souls
are sitting in a darkness which does not pass.
We are up on the rock-top still, resting in the utter
peace. The sun has set. It will soon be after-glow.
The plain looks immense in the gloaming, the moun-
tains very high. Five minutes pass. We watch the
clouds slip down the bare slopes of the nearer hills.
There is a hush as if mountains, plain, and sky, were
waiting for something sure to come. It comes, gently
at first, then with a majestic sweep as the pent-up
BUT IT is THERE 229
energy of light breaks forth and floods the atmosphere.
Then the sky flames out in a fan of fire, and the russet
reaches of burnt hill grass, and the patches of reddish
earth on the plain, kindle suddenly, and the mountains,
half emerging from clouds that are golden now, stand
solemn in their purple. All the world seems full of
song, with shapes and colours for music and words, as
the sky grows blue in the east, and pales into opal
above. To the west it still burns and flames, and the
glory of it lingers on the plain as we come down. We
almost quite forget the dark in this loveliness of light.
But it is there : we see it personified, down below.
For set in a hollow, jutting jet black from the black
of the shadow, with outstretched hand that grasps a
knife, is a single hateful threatening form, the idol of
the rock.
CHAPTER XXIX
Mosaic
ITINEKATTNG work is a work without an evident end.
It is full of fragments variously cut and coloured
which sometimes seem to be strewn about to no
purpose. And you want to retrace, and gather the
pieces together, and fit them into something. But you
probably find this is not your business. Occasionally,
however, you are allowed to go back and see how God
has been fitting into His great mosaic the pieces you
thought scattered and lost, and you see how He thought
of each little piece, when He formed the design at the
first.
Star has recently lost her father. He had been draw-
ing nearer to us all in friendliness, and had given up
idolatry ; but he had not accepted Christ, because as
head of his caste he had so much to lose. And yet, as
death came swiftly, he would not allow them to do any-
thing idolatrous. " No, it is no use," he said. And
almost his last thought was for the child he had pursed
once, but forgiven. " Don't write to her till I am gone ;
she cannot come in time." And all his thoughts were
kindly and gentle as he passed away.
When he passed the priest took possession. Every-
230
HOME, BUT NOT AT HOME 231
thing was done in style. Four hundred rupees were spent
on the Brahmans and relations, who were sumptuously
feasted for days. By the time we got there, things had
settled down into a tired-out quietness. Even the poor
mother had hardly spirit to rise to the customary wail,
and the call of the little sisters, " Father ! our sister has
come ! " sounded wearily.
It was a difficult day. Between those who love our
Lord and those who do not, there is a separation which
no affection can quite cross. Star could not do all they
wanted her to do, so they thought her unfeeling. They
did not know of the heart-broken crying, night after
night, as she woke up dreaming about her father. She
did not wail in the orthodox way, using unmeaning, un-
truthful expressions ; so they thought she did not care.
There was loneliness outside, that curious loneliness
which comes when you return to a place which once
knew you well, and now knows you no more. The
very houses and streets were dear, but they looked
coldly upon her. She had sat among her own, indoors,
and after the first greeting they had looked upon her
askance. She went out to renew her friendship with
the familiar things, and they said to her, " We do not
belong to you." The little sisters ceased calling to
their father to come, and began to talk of a wedding
and jewels. " If you will marry according to caste, and
wear suitable jewels, we will all join the Way." We
were hospitably entertained, and treated with more than
common kindness ; they even let us share in the family
meal (as they were mourning, caste rules were re-
laxed), and Star's mother insisted on feeding me with
232 MOSAIC
her own hand, pressing dainty morsels rolled in moist
balls into my mouth. But there was always the sense
of separation, the chasm between. They would not let
Star mention the Lord Jesus : " Have you not written
us many letters ? Is that not enough ? " They pressed
jewels upon her : " Your ear lobes ought to be dangling
to your shoulders, and crammed with jewels. We are
ashamed of your appearance." They filled the day with
conversation about such matters, and Star's sore heart
grew sorer. The house to her was full of her father, and
they could talk of these trivial things. The day was
shadowed in other ways ; we were so often reminded
that under all the colour of this colourful land there
is something heavy and black.
Among Star's cousins is a young wife whose wistful-
ness told us at once that she had no little children. A
childless wife is not honoured here ; and a look grows
into the face which tells the tale of the years. We
went to her house ; it is large and roomy, built to be
filled, but empty. " Her husband deals in magic,"
some one explained, and we understood. Childlessness,
according to tradition, is the price paid for possession
of occult power. The magician's generation ceases with
himself.
Then story after story was half whispered, half
gestured ; stories full of mystery, told with perfect
simplicity and no sense of surprise or untruth, but
always under breath, as if they feared the Power would
overhear. These stories were all about the influence
of a certain curalai, a medium belonging to the girl's
husband ; it was kept in a corner of the house where we
THE CABINET 233
sat, and they offered to show it to me, but the thing,
besides being in measure Satanic, was made of an
infant's bones, and I had no desire to see it. " If lie
brought it out, and so willed it, he could mesmerise you
perfectly," they all affirmed with confidence, and I felt
half inclined to let him try, and prove the fallacy, but
resisted the temptation ; it would have done no good.
The East is the home of spiritualism and hypnotism.
The secrets connected with mental suggestion and sub-
consciousness are open secrets here. But though this
wonderful old land, with its wonderful old ways, lies all
round us, most of us live in it without knowing much
about it. It hides itself from us. Even its language
has its hidden talk, an ingenious combination of vocals
and consonants worked into the colloquial. India is a
cabinet of drawers, and secret drawers. We only know
enough to know that we do not know.
From this home we went to another where the
parents of one of Mr. Walker's convert boys live. We
were shown into a courtyard packed with servants
teasing cotton. The air was full of the white fluff, and
we found it difficult to speak. But the good-natured,
laughter-loving people were ready to listen ; it made a
little diversion in their day. After we had finished
with them, their master, our boy's father, led us up a
narrow ladder to a loft at the top of the house. We
had heard that loft described, and looked round it with
interest. " Yes," said the old man, reading our thought,
" this is the room I locked him in. For five days and
five nights I kept him here. I tied him to that pillar.
I locked up that window lest he should slip through it
234 MOSAIC
out on the roof." All this frankness was surprising ;
one learns to look behind frankness in India. " But now
all desire that he should be a Hindu has faded from
my mind. I have not the least feeling of anything but
complete satisfaction that he should be a Christian. I
beseech you to tell the Iyer this, and to persuade him
to send the boy home. See ! his mother is pining to
death for her son." And the mother was dramatically
produced.
For a moment I smiled. The old man's ulterior
object was so very evident. I wondered how he could
expect us to be so easily caught. But a glance at the
mother sent a pang through me. It was true : she was
pining to death for her son. The Sword and Variance
cut cruelly.
I dare not give the parents hope that the Iyer would
send the boy back. It would have been too dangerous.
" What happened last time your word was trusted and
he was brought to see you ? " " Ah, that was an un-
fortunate misadventure," and the old man waved his
hand lightly as if waving off its memory. An hour or
two later we passed the place where the " misadventure "
occurred. One of our little party had been through it,
and described it to me with spirit : " Hundreds of the
boy's caste men, led by his father and mother, came
rushing for us at once like a fury of great waters. See,
here they seized the bulls and tore them out of the
cart. And here the mother threw herself down on the
ground and raved and would not stir. So many people
pressing all round, and roaring, all their mouths open,
and all their hands stretched out — and we in the
"KEPT" 235
midst of it. Oh, such angry faces ! Oh, how they
shouted, and they hissed upon us like snakes. Then
God came to our deliverance. For the aged Headman
sent to his son and said, ' Years ago a white man helped
me. There is a white man in trouble now. Go and
help him in his need.' But when the son came he was
dismayed. ' The people are too strong for me. What
can I do ? I am but one.' Then suddenly God
bestowed courage upon him, and he threw up his arms
and shouted, and he quelled the riot, and we passed
through."
That day, together in the bungalow, Mrs. Walker and
I had read Daily Light, and found comfort in it : " Holy
Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou
hast given Me." We did not apprehend such danger,
but we knew there was peril in the experiment of taking
a bandy load of converts back to their own village to
witness to their own people, even though we had the
promise of safe conduct. But good came out of apparent
harm. That day has its place in the mosaic.
We left Star's home in the evening, and, some miles
from it, came upon a patch of garden ground. Out on
the great sand waste, where nothing grows but palm and
scrub, there is a company of true believers led by a
simple countryman, who, unknown to the preacher, was
converted through an ordinary sermon in church. This
man went home, started what would now be called a
Prayer Circle, led it, went out witnessing to the sur-
rounding villages, and so impressed the little group of
Christians in his village with the immense importance
of this witnessing work, that, out of their poverty, they
236 MOSAIC
subscribed towards the expenses involved. In country,
as in town, the number who receive the truth is small.
Village after village, the pastor tells you sorrowfully, is
without a single real Christian, and the towns stand
almost unmoved. But the witness is being borne.
In the adjoining village we saw more of the mosaic.
The pastor and his wife, the same who helped Gladness,
are warm and most courageous where converts are con-
cerned. Their brave influence has helped many. When
we remembered how this came about, we wondered at
the ways of God, who expends so much thought upon
preparing one to help another, and then so works that
those who need a certain sort of help are brought in
touch with those prepared to give it. The mosaic is
being fashioned everywhere.
Among those about whom we inquired, there were
some whose stories seem like broken bits of a broken
plan. As many have asked about them we mention
them here. Treasure and Gold, two girls who once
were almost martyrs for Jesus' sake, had been married
to Hindus and sent far away. We went to the place
on the lake, near its little temple, where Gold had been
almost drowned. We stood on the same lake-side where
Treasure stood to be scourged. They had been pressed
too far. They had both quite given in.
The little child, the rose-bud crushed, had been for-
gotten by everyone ; spoiled flowers are soon forgotten
in this forgetful world. The child we last saw drugged
was dead ; her first year killed her, the woman said, and
before I could stop them, they told me how. The story
sickened us for days. What must the holy Son of God
"LENT" 237
have suffered in spirit day by day, all through those
years of human life, as He saw life's sin, and heard its
moan, and knew it never need have been.
But by far the most sorrow-laden hour was spent in
the village from which the little child was taken to the
temple near our house. We saw the relative whose
word could have prevented it. He told us the child was
in the village " lent by the temple." We saw her, a
child changed — most piteously changed. All we had
feared had been done.
" They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone ;
The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own.
The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone.
Ease caitiff's who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her.
Ye left her there — alone."
Married to the god, " tied to the stone," it is their
very idiom : oh, the burning, unspeakable wrong of it !
Cold, cold, one may try to be, and it is easy to be cold
when one only reads of it ; but when one sees it, sees
the changed child-face, sees the passing of the innocence
that will never come again ; feels, as if one's own soul
felt it, the brand of the iron, the sting of the shame,
then it is not easy to be cold. India sees a pathetic
picture in the lamb in the slaughter-house, " which crops
the fragrant shoots that dangle from the slayer's hand."
When will she see something far more pathetic in the
play of these small child lambs in the shambles within
her Temple courts ?
But as I looked back to that heart-breaking sight,
the sight of that little doomed lamb being led through
the wood and away, it seemed as though I were looking
238 MOSAIC
upon a piece of the mosaic, a blood-red bit meant to
fit somewhere, even now fitting into its place. For have
not many eyes followed that child in her walk through
the wood ? Have hearts not ached to run after her, and
catch her, and save her, as she turned and waved her
little hand ? And the child they saw drugged on the
floor ? Have some not looked again and again, and then
looked up in anguish, that found relief only in strong
crying and tears unto Him that was able to save ? Has
the pain all passed in vain ? and the prayer ? Is there
no connection between that first breaking out of prayer
and the beginning of what looks like an answer ? Nine
months after that first prayer, the word came unmistak-
ably, " Come, search for the little lost lambs with
Me." Since then, the search has gone on, and some
have been found. Will not the Good Shepherd go on
finding His lambs ? Perhaps the Temple children's time
has come at last.
The Fort lay on our homeward way. No one had
visited it since we last went, though afterwards a sister
missionary had a good entrance there. We had been
travelling for days, and had a long journey before us that
night, but the hope of an opened door braced us, as we
went in. Again the unchanging silence. The very sun-
shine seemed stiller here than outside. We found our
way as of old to the shadiest street, and waited awhile,
but no one came ; so we went on, found a deserted
house in good repair, explored its rooms through barred
windows ; went on farther, saw shrines, near the temple,
small shrines full of idols ; saw traces everywhere of life,
strong though so old, but saw no life : only a black goat
"THERE is DEATH HERE" 239
wandered free, and the sparrows chirped, and squirrels
darted across the path.
We ventured to knock at last. The door suddenly
opened, and as suddenly shut, then opened again, and a
woman's voice called, " Whoever you are, by the way you
came — Go ! There is death here : go ! "
We found an awning of mats, where four ways met,
and waited, wondering if anyone would come. No woman
would, we knew, but a man might. Presently one
came. " Are you the pulse-feeling Missie Ammal ? The
Government sent one here last week, and we showed her
the kindness of allowing her to feel our women's pulses."
The questioner was a young man educated outside, as
some of the younger generation are. He was interested
in our message, and promised to influence his people to
listen to it, or, as he put it, " learn." The Headman,
" Absolute Truth -speaker," would, he was sure, put no
obstacle in the way of the women and children being
taught. We could not see him ; he was mourning, as all
the Fort was, because of the death of one of the Clan.
Several bright little girls came out very shyly, and we
made friends with them. A servant passed, fattening
himself against the wall before he got within con-
taminating radius. The children drew their small
garments close about them lest his very shadow should
fall and defile. The man seemed almost to shrivel up in
his servility. The children glanced at him not unkindly,
but the pride and the ignorance of centuries was painted
as by an invisible hand upon their little faces then.
After a while they left us, and we went to one of the
tamarind trees near the door of the Fort, and kneeling
240 MOSAIC
there in the shade prayed for the place as we never
prayed before. We left it then, wrapped in that strange
hush, unbroken by even the sound of the chant they
raise for their dead.
We travelled straight on that afternoon and night,
stopping only at midnight to dine, and then chiefly
because the bandy-man had lost his way. And as we
sat there in the quiet dark, with the silence of the sky
above us and the plain about us, the solemnity of life in
this land pressed upon us, bore in upon us, penetrated us.
The people pass across the plain so quickly. Oh, are we
half in earnest to reach them before they pass ?
CHAPTER XXX
Background
" "ITT HAT you see in a thing depends very much upon
V T its background." The words bear a wide inter-
pretation. You return from an itinerating
tour thankful for any sign of victory, but heart-sore
because of the triumph of evil, and foot-sore too, for so
often you trod upon graves that appear not ; sometimes
such small child-graves that the pity of it appealed. If
you have any voice left, you sing choruses of praise and
gladness as your bullock-cart slowly trundles along, but
through the choruses, often and often from somewhere
very deep within you, the cry cuts its way out : " Oh, let
the wickedness of the wicked come to an end ! " The
end seems far enough distant to-day. The sound of a
shaken leaf shall chase them — yes, but when ? Come,
Lord Jesus ! Come quickly !
The bullock-cart blunders through the village, and
turns into the compound. There is a dab of colour at
the gate. It moves, scatters, resolves itself into dancing
dots of crimson and blue. Then there are shouts of
welcome, sadly unmodulated probably, but very sincere.
Little happy children are running all about, bewildering
the bulls, climbing into the bandy, lifting up raptured
16
242 BACKGROUND
smaller ones to be pulled into the bandy and kissed.
Dark in the distance is the background. Poor little
child—
"They left thee in thy peril and thy pain,
The night that hath no morrow was brooding o'er the main."
Strange background for any little child : the peril and
the pain, and the night that has no morrow.
" But lo ! a light is breaking of hope for thee again " :
the foreground fills with the light ; and the joy you find in
it is intensified by every throb of consciousness of what the
background meant. The next few chapters are intended
only for lovers of little children. They will be fore-
ground. This chapter, by way of background, comes first.
One of our Temple-children workers was with me when,
after several years absence from the place, I spent a few
days near the village which used to be our home, and
visited the house from which the Elf, our first Temple
child, escaped.
It is a palm-leaf thatched cottage in a secluded street
near the Temple. The woman I so well remembered,
whose eyes seemed hypnotic in influence, met us outside
the courtyard, and, to our surprise, half welcomed us.
There were five children there. The two eldest, girls of
about eleven and twelve, had come to the bungalow to
coax the Elf to leave us ; they remembered me, and ran
up in friendly fashion, full of questions. " Is she not
married ? We were married two years ago ! " And
they pulled at their little garments and showed me the
Temple marriage symbol fastened to their necklets.
" Do you say she is not married yet ? Has she nice
"To THE GOD, YOU UNDERSTAND?" 243
jewels and silks ? No jewels ? no silks ? Oh ! Aiyo !
Aiyo ! Why does she not come back ? "
A sweet shy child of six drew close to us, and laid a
light little hand in mine. She reminded me of the
Elf as she was when she came to us first, only the Elf
was never shy. The others pointed to her as she stood
in the grace of her childish beauty. " She is to be married
next month, or the month after, to the god, you under-
stand ? Great Perumal ! She will have better jewels
then than these she is wearing now. Beautiful jewels
like ours."
At this point the woman interfered, and whispered
something to the children about our having come to
catch them by magic, as we had caught the Elf. This
frightened them, and thereafter they peeped at us from
behind the Temple woman, to whom we talked for
a while. But the dear little younger one would not
be frightened, she came quietly close again. " Ghee ! "
said the Temple woman, and swept them all into the
house.
We feared nothing could be done to save that little
girl, whose grace and sweetness had won upon us so ; but
to make sure, we wrote to a friend in the Civil Service
who would do anything in his power to save these
children. We put the facts before him. His answer,
written after consideration and inquiry, came to this :
As things are, you can do nothiug. Not that there
is no law bearing upon such a case, but that its
provisions are inadequate and need considerable amend-
ment, if prosecution is to issue in the salvation of the
child.
244 BACKGROUND
It is two months since that day. The little girl of
six years old is married to Perumal now. " One more
devil's triumph, and sorrow for angels. One more wrong
to man. One more insult to God."
In another house, belonging to another temple in the
same village, we found a secular marriage in progress.
The bride was the Temple woman's sister. Fate, as they
would put it, chose out one of the family to belong to
the god, the others live the usual life. The one chosen
has adopted several little children, all of whom have now
become family property. They will, as they grow up,
call their adopted mother, " Mother," her relations will
be aunts, uncles, cousins. Thus the entanglement
becomes complete, and it is impossible to extricate such
a child, as all claim it equally, and it believes it belongs
to all. We saw four babies in that house. " My child,"
or "My sister's child," meaning her Temple-sister's, said
the woman we knew, when we asked her about them.
" My niece," said the little bride, as, tired of marriage
solemnities, she relaxed and played with a babe.
We looked longingly at the little things, with their
innocent eyes and soft fat hands that closed round one's
finger as baby hands will. If only we could have drawn
them out, just as they were, without letting go ! It was
impossible.
These babes grown up are everywhere still more
impossible to save. They are too deeply involved in the
life to which, apart from all choice of their own, they
have been delivered by hands too strong to resist. We
saw one such a week ago. We were led to her by a
child of seven, who explained in detail who she was.
"WlLL SHE BELIEVE IT?" 245
She lives alone in a handsome house, two storied, tile-
roofed. Near was another Temple house, full to the
doors with mother, daughters, and their children. That
mother had told me wonderful stories about a Government
rule which all obeyed : " No child may be married now
before twelve : so when she is twelve we take her and
say, ' Will you be married to god or man ? ' and as she
says, so we do." Then aside to the listening daughters,
" Will she believe it, do you think ? "
But it was the girl in the house alone whose face and
ways will not be forgotten. She was beautiful, and very
gentle. Her voice was low and she spoke with refine-
ment, using choice expressions culled from books. She
had been reading poetry before we came. The book was
on her knee. The poetry was bad, but there was no
hint of the debased in the quiet face and manner. If
only we could have had her as a little child !
She told us the beginning of her story. Her mother
had been the servant of a famous north-country god.
She never remembered any other life. She was "married"
at five — to the god. " There is pleasure, a kind of
pleasure : there is that also which is not pleasure," she
said gravely, but with no wish awakened for a different
life. Pleasure ; for no orthodox ceremony of importance
is complete without the consecrating presence of a Servant
of the gods ; nor would any orthodox Hindu feel other
than blessed should he meet such a one at the beginning
of a new undertaking; the omen is auspicious. Not
pleasure ; for the truer feeling of the people shows in
many little ways. The Service of the gods, though so
honoured, is dishonoured, and the sensitive girl-heart,
246 BACKGROUND
hardly knowing how she knows it, still feels it. Such
is India, inconsistent with her higher self, creating a
system, calling it sacred, at her best ashamed of it, yet
perpetuating it. The father is sick. The mother vows
as her choicest gift her eldest little daughter, should her
husband recover. The father agrees. He recovers.
Together they take the little child and offer her to the
god. The priests receive her. The god accepts. No
one protests. The thing is religious, meritorious. Yet
afterwards no father who had not done this thing would
like his little daughter to be mistaken for that dedicated
child. Could extreme of contradiction find more direct
expression? "What has been done is good, right — the
best that could be done. Its result, a thing despised,
and yet a thing most cherished. In certain cases such
a child is cruelly handled from the first, but not
invariably. Oftener she is feted, jewelled, petted, led
in her wondering innocence through ways we may not
trace, formed and fashioned day by day till all the
child in her withers and dies. Then she is meet for
the use of the Hindu ideal of God.
Such facts gather force as you sit by the side of a
girl whose life they have crossed. We had to leave her
as we found her, like a bird with its wings clipped,
thrown on the ground. Only, unbird-like, she did not
flutter ; she had grown accustomed to the dust.
When first we began our search for Temple children,
with the definite intention of trying to save them, we
wrote to the only two missionaries known to us to be
conversant with the facts concerning them. We found
their experience tallied. The salvation of a bond fide
THE SEARCH 247
Temple child, or a child in danger of being appropriated
by Temple people, is something more difficult of accom-
plishment than those who have not this special experi-
ence would readily believe. As a matter of fact we
had to buy our own experience. No one could advise
us how to set about saving the children. But we have
had all possible sympathy from fellow-missionaries, and
nothing they could do to help us has been left undone.
A few extracts from letters recently received may be of
interest here. They illustrate the search.
" J. (an Indian worker) is after a little girl of about
seven years old, who is to be married to the god on the
27th. He is very keen to save her, but there are many
difficulties in the way." Shortly afterwards we heard
that the child was married. Wedding cards were issued
as for an ordinary marriage. We did not hear of this in
time to secure a card, which if obtained would have been
excellent proof of the fact of illegal action. Ceaseless
efforts have been made for over a year to save this child,
but in vain.
" Last Friday I heard of four little girls. They all
belong to the Temple. Two are married to thr god ; two
not. The married children's people get a grant of sixty-
two quarts of rice a mouth from the Temple. There are
ten children in this Temple. One of the married children
is just six years old (by ' married ' is meant ceremonial
marriage to the stone who represents the god). All
these ten have been separately sought, but their guardians
refuse to give them up. We consulted a lawyer, but
were not encouraged to do anything. The required
proof, as usual, is unobtainable ; and we should have
248 BACKGROUND
against us not only the children's own parents, but
the police bribed by the priests, and in fact the whole
population."
" The family is very rich. The mother is in the pro-
fession. S. is such a dear, pretty little thing. There
seems no hope of saving her."
" I saw the judge about the baby (going to be devoted
to the god). He said nothing could be done. It would
be impossible to get sufficient proof of the mother's
future intentions."
" The girl is in the Temple, and lost. Her brother
did not want her to go. We thought we might get her
and send her to you, particularly as she herself did not
want to go. But her parents were too strong for us.
She was spirited off at night, and is now in the Temple.
She was thirteen years of age, and well-nigh a Christian."
Later, about the same child : " She is quite changed.
Nothing can be done."
" P. is a pretty, fair girl of about nine, a pupil in our
mission school. She is the daughter and granddaughter
of Temple women, and is being brought up to the same
life. G. is about ten years of age. Her mother told
us she had married all her daughters as they grew up
except G., who was to go to the Temple. It was the
custom of their family that one girl should be so devoted,
and they must do as their elders had done." Earnest
efforts have been made to save these children, but in
vain.
" The little child we wrote to you about was taken to
the Temple last week. We went and inquired, but the
people in^the street said they knew nothing of her ; and
"BARE IN DREADFULNESS " 249
beyond tracing her to the Temple we have been able to
do nothing. We have not seen her since she was taken
away; and we cannot find out whether she is still in
the house or whether she has been sent elsewhere. The
people in the street are ready to swear to anything the
woman who has adopted the child tells them to say."
" Little A. was sent to the Temple. We have just
heard of her death. B. ran from the room with his
hands over his ears to shut out the sound of her cries."
" So did his cruelty burn life about, and lay the ruin
bare in dreadfulness." Let these words for one moment
name out that story. Then let it drop back into the
night.
" He (the Secretary of the Society for the Protection
of Children in India, with headquarters in Calcutta) is
right in what he says about future legislation being
needed. But I don't think it will be yet. We have
not the men to enforce it if it were passed, at present."
These extracts are chiefly from missionaries of different
Societies working in British India and the Southern
Native States. The last quotation is from an Indian
Civil Servant. Other members of the Service have
written to us from time to time with a strength of
sympathy for which we, who have to grapple with these
facts, are very grateful. We have friends in the Service
upon whom we can count for any help within their
power. Sometimes we feel the time must be near when
something more will be done. In the meantime the
children of this generation are passing in through those
great gates that open inwards and then shut.
CHAPTER XXXI
Warped Land
SO far the Weight : thank God there is the Over-
weight ; more than an Overweight of Joy.
The Spectator had something to do with its
creation.
One day a small girl appeared on my verandah. " I
want to be ' joined/ " she remarked. " Joined to what ? "
" To your preaching band," was the unexpected answer,
with an upward turn of the eyes and a downward droop
of the mouth.
We found she had a Christian relation, though her
nearest were heathen. Her parents were dead. Her
heathen relations had turned her adrift. She drifted to
her Christian relation, who forwarded her to us. We
interviewed these affectionate relatives, and found them
all decided in refusing her. They could do nothing with
her, they said. She was nine, and apparently naughty.
Not quite a case for the band.
There were reasons which made us hesitate about
adopting her. We had newly come to Dohnavur for a
year's work, and were anxious not to do anything which
would give colour to the rumours which had preceded us,
that we were " Catchers of children." We had never
250
THE SPECTATOR 251
caught any ; we bad only sheltered a few converts who
had come to us ; but facts are not in question where
such stories are concerned. Then, too, we felt the rela-
tions ought to do their obvious duty. We were puzzled
about ours. In the meantime the little girl was fed.
She was given a doll, at which she stared ungratefully.
She was not satisfied with her food, and tried to steal
other people's. She was altogether deplorable. After a
few days' experience we could hardly wonder that nobody
wanted her, except the One who always wants the
naughtiest of us.
It was then that the Spectator came, an old copy which
had done duty in several mission stations. In it was an
article about Warping. " A recent writer on reclaiming
land from the sea gives £40 per acre as the cost of
making Warp land. Warping is the art of stealing land
from the waters. Reclamation is forcible rescue by build-
ing a bank round ground already rising above sea level."
£40 for an acre of sand: some fancy set me working
out the value of an acre of soul. Suppose we did every-
thing for this child for ten years, according to the then
purchasing power of the rupee, so far as I could make
out the cost would be about £35. Allow £5 for con-
tingencies. It came to £40.
This cold-blooded calculation may shock the mind which
never descends to the mundane. Do not mission chil-
dren subsist upon air ? (Indian air being so nourishing.)
And as for clothes, in the Tropics of course they are not
required. But though sooner or later curry and rice and
raiment, and even such a detail as education, have to be
considered, I cannot say that at that moment, or ever
252 WARPED LAND
after in any case, questions affecting provision weighed
in the very least. Our Father is our Treasurer. All we
wanted was to know what He wanted us to do. The
Warp land calculation was merely a freak ; its result a
" chance " coincidence. But when one is looking for
light upon anything it is curious to notice how all manner
of little side-lights bend little rays upon it, till the way
in which one should walk is all lighted up. The
Spectator suggested thoughts about the value of a little
sand to man. From this we passed to thoughts about
the value of a little soul to God. The value of the
sand was measurable: £40 per acre. The value of a
single little soul, in one sense at least, was measurable
too : we know the price paid down to reclaim it. The
question was settled that afternoon. And often since
that afternoon the Spectator has repeated its message;
when the little acre of soul has seemed unpromising we
have remembered that the acre of sand is probably
unpromising at first ; and the thought of its worth to
its Owner has come with inspiration over and over again.
Shortly after our return to the eastern side of the
district the little Elf was brought to us. Her deliver-
ance was wonderful enough to require a wonderful ex-
planation, and the firm belief of our people is that the
angel who delivered Peter had something to do with it.
In all ways the Elf was a contrast to the Imp, as No. 1
was too easily called. She was very much wanted. We
never felt her safe till we had settled in Dohnavur
again.
Soon after God gave us the Elf He moved once more
for the salvation of children in similar danger. Two
GROWING YOUNG 253
little girls, whose people were connected with Temple
service, became members of our family. Deeper and
deeper thereafter we found ourselves involved in what
seems like another life-system far remote from our own.
Sometimes the children have to be redeemed at cost.
Always they are spoils won in battle between the strong
man armed and the Stronger. The joy is that they are
being won.
Another joy is found in the change that passes upon
them after they are won. Sometimes they come to us
looking like little women-girls. No light on the little
faces, no natural child-expression. The photographs
which illustrate this were not taken for that purpose.
Nor are they perfect as illustrations, for the little girl
shown here was never a Temple child. The strained, too-
old expression, was the result of the extreme severity
exercised by the child's father, a man of powerful will,
who had beaten down resistance in his sons, and deter-
mined to do the same with his little daughter. But
nevertheless the photo shows that happy thing, the
growing younger of a child who has grown too old. So
we let it tell its tale, which in the case of a Temple
child is far more emphasised, for even the most unnatural
Hindu home life cannot compare for unnaturalness with
the life lived by the little Temple girl.
There was one — I wish we could show her photo —
who, when she was brought to us a baby barely two years
old, was more like a trapped wild animal than a little
human child. She had changed hands four times within
a few days. She was old enough to suffer pitifully. The
little face with its terrified eyes told us that. For five
254 WARPED LAND
days that little child moaned and cried like a whipped
puppy. She cried even in her sleep. Once, a week
after she came to us, she saw a woman standing at the
gate with a child in her arms. It must have wakened
up some baby memory, for in a moment both little arms
went out in wildest entreaty, and the child, who had
never spoken to us in articulate words, suddenly cried,
" There ! there ! " meaning she wanted to be taken there.
And she sobbed for hours after that, over and over and
over again, till we were heart-sick at the sound, the
Tamil baby word for " Mother ! Mother ! Mother ! "
That poor mother had refused to give her baby to the
Temple women who wanted her. Something was done
to force her, the particulars are not known, but she
became mad, and tried to drown the little child. Then
while she slept it was taken from her, and sent off to a
Travancore Temple. The mother is wandering, no one
knows where, quite mad.
This little child, such a happy child now, full of coax-
ing little ways and funny broken talk, was heard the
other day teaching her junior, a small, very fat, curly-
headed little tot, to repeat the few English words she,
little Lotus, knows : " DeaJi Loleypoley ! say ' 'ittle darr-
ling!'"
Sometimes when the children come they are like the
ghosts of little girls. One, who is now a sunny little
maid, was like a child walking in her sleep for a whole
month after her arrival, until we began to fear for her
mind, she was so strange. She would sit for hours
without moving, dazed and absent. She rarely spoke ;
she never smiled. She was a four-year-old Brahman
LITTLE LAUGHTER 255
child from the Malabar coast, who, so far as we could
learn, had been kidnapped by Temple scouts, and brought
over to our side of the mountains for sale. Her ears had
been cut to disguise her. Her little body had been burnt.
The cuts and the burns had healed, but there must
have been some inward hurt, and it was still unhealed.
She told us nothing, never has told us anything ; we hope
she has forgotten all. To this day we can only guess
what the shock must have been from which recovery was
so slow. It came at last. The place in the compound
where we were when first the child-nature woke and
laughed, is marked by one of those bright marks memory
makes sometimes. Leela — Lightsomeness, Playfulness —
is her name now, and her nursery pet name is Little
Laughter.
Lotus and Leela are helpful, when new children who
look hopeless enough to discourage the most sanguine of
us, come. After our experience with them we feel we
have courage for anything. Two Little girls were brought
to us lately about whom we should have naturally
despaired. But who could despair with Leela and Lotus
in evidence ? Every time we saw them at play we felt
cheered in hope for the new two.
These two had a tragic story. Their father in a fit of
passion killed their mother, while the little sisters looked
on horrified. They fell into bad hands, and were taken
to a Temple house. Finally they were brought to us.
The year had left an ugly mark upon them. The ideal
Temple child is refined in manner ; that passes too often
as the years pass, but the child at first is an attractive
little thing. No other is of use. She is usually " fair,"
256 WARPED LAND
as the word goes here, anything from olive to hazel-nut
colour. She has a certain manner and way of her own,
and she is responsive to influence, keen-brained, bright.
These two were the opposite of this. They were coarsened
little beings, inside and out. They were extremely dull.
It was not the dulness of drugging, as in little Leela's
case. It may have been the result of abnormally severe
treatment, for one of the children had been pinched
through the skin as a punishment, and the other had been
burnt with the flat side of a knife on either arm ; the
marks are still distinct. Whatever the cause, the chil-
dren were most miserable, not pathetic or interestingly
sorrowful, but just very cross. We felt inclined to call
them Mumps and Grumps, but instead gave them names
meaning Pleasure and Friendliness. I overheard a scrap
of six praying by herself in a corner : " Help me to love
the two new little girls just as if they were nice." This
prayer expressed our feelings. Everything is different
now. Six months' persistent anointing with cocoanut
oil had a most smoothing effect on the roughened exterior.
An equally softening inward effect was produced by six
months' lavish love and happiness. It is an effort of
memory now to recall the time when the two little girls
were rude and glum and sulky, and almost made us call
them Mumps and Grumps.
The dear little Firefly flew to us out of a similar back-
ground of darkness, but she never was depressed. The
children called her Firefly from the first, because of her
lightness and brightness. The beginning of her story
was written in sorrow in the chapter1 whose name
1 Chapter xi.
OUR FIRST TEMPLE BABY 257
contains a prophecy — " The Grace of the People to come."
It did not seem possible then that she could be delivered :
to-day she is with us, an Overweight of Joy.
But the children in detail would weary you, perhaps.
There is nothing remarkable about them. They are
chiefly interesting to their own, to whom in truth they
become more interesting every day.
They are rejoicing now in possessing a nursery proper.
For some time they were all cramped up in a room
which had to serve for kitchen, dining, and bedroom. Then
friends, — fellow-missionaries, chiefly, — sent us what built
a fine long room with verandah closing on either end, and
this, built so as to form a square with the old room for one
side, makes a perfect nursery. In the centre is a court-
yard garden, with a tulip tree, which, as the children
firmly believe, God caused to be planted on purpose for
us ; and flowers and creepers, and, above all, a swing,
make this courtyard a place of delight.
The nursery children begin with the babies. The
first to come to us was four hours old when she was
taken to the Temple woman's house, and for ten days she
was kept there, and considered, as the custom is, the
daughter of the Temple woman who had adopted her.
About the same time another tiny baby was adopted by a
Temple woman known to us, ,-nd another baby-girl we
had traced to a Temple horse disappeared before we
could reach her. It is most difficult in the first place to
trace, and in the second place to prove our traces, where
these babies are concerned. Then, too, as one of the
letters quoted told, there are cases where the priest of
the temple to which the child is eventually to belong,
258 WARPED LAND
supports the mother until the little one can be dedicated.
So that every possible selfish feeling and consideration is
ranged against us, and the devil fights for his minute
prey as if each unconscious infant were a little queen.
One cannot understand it till one remembers that if only
he can hold on for the next few years, the child will
become not only doubly his, but his for others' destruction.
Touch a Temple child and you touch the heart of the
system which has only one rival in all the world for its
subjugating power. No wonder the devil fights.
A few nights before that baby of four hours old was
taken to the temple, one of our pastors and an evangelist
saw for the first time what we have so often seen,
Temple women and children out in the street in the
evening. The sight stirred them, and later, when the
pastor heard of that baby, it moved him to try to save
it. He worked hard and he prayed, and this child, the
only one of the three, was saved.
We shall never forget the night she came : the little,
old, tired baby face, the little, feeble, weary cry, the little
hands moving restlessly as if feeling for a mother, none
of us ever forget. She had travelled over a hundred
miles, and she almost died on my knee that night ; but
we did not know then how much she had been hurt, and
we hardly understood what we had undertaken. The
experienced say she cannot live to grow up, but her
smiles " cool our hearts," and we hope much for her.
" What is she to be called, our very first Temple
baby ? " This important question came from all the
children at once. The Elf ran off for her " gee-lit Bible,"
turned the pages hurriedly, found a verse and read it :
AMETHYST, SAPPHIRE, SUNFLOWER 259
" ' The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished
with all manner of precious stones.' This is the stone I
like ' The twelfth an Amethyst! She was going to be a
stone in Satan's city wall, and now " The Elf
stopped and looked tentatively at me. We all thought it
would do. So our first Temple baby is called Amethyst.
When the second came, the lovely laughing Eajput
baby, saved by another pastor, the jewel verse was re-
ferred to again : " The second a Sapphire." The name
expresses the little one. There is the unclouded serenity
as of deep blue skies about her. Indraneela (Sapphire),
she is the joy of our hearts, such a whole round gift
of joy.
Then came baby No. 3, terribly injured, whose
wails at first were ceaseless. But a few months' care
worked a change that was good to see. Little Sun-
flower we call her, in faith that her life will be full of
sunshine, in spite of its dark beginning. These three
make the nursery the centre of things interesting, and
I think we all have felt the fascination of the little
loving things who ask for so much, get more than they
ask, and give more so unconsciously.
CHAPTER XXXII
The Children's Hour
nnORRENCE, the American poet, in verses entitled
J- " The Conclusion of the Whole Matter," thus sums
things up :
"In this rough field of earthly life
I have reaped cause for tears enough ;
Yet after all I think I've gleaned
My modicum of laughing stuff."
Those of us who are allowed to live sometimes in the
children's world find plenty of laughing stuff there.
Only it is not the sort of stuff which can be packed
up and sent anywhere.
From five o'clock till sunset is the children's hour.
Their playground lies to the west, with the mountains
in view, and a great expanse of sky. Here the happy
little people play to their heart's content; and, as a
grateful small girl put it, " Nobody says ' Be quiet.' "
Sometimes, but rarely, they are quiet. " Hush "
(literally Breathe not !) : " we have found a little birdling,
and it is so homesick ! " This quiets everybody ; there
is an eager crowding round the fortunate finder, and
a dozen little hands are stretched out to stroke the
"homesick" little bird. Sick birds and strayed birds
260
THE PLAYGROUND 261
are our most usual pets. We have not the heart to
shut up wild things in cages, except when they are
invalided or too young to fend for themselves. When
they are considered well enough or old enough to be
set at liberty, there is general jubilation. But, alas !
the little sunbird that has licked honey for a fortnight
from affectionate fingers is apt to acquire too trustful
a disposition for life in a world infested by hard pressed
pariah dogs. " The babies are our longest lasting pets,"
one small mourner was heard confiding to another after
the tragic deaths of several little favourites ; " I am
glad there is no wild beast that wants to eat them up."
Animals would be much to the fore if only we could
suitably have them. " When I am grown up," said
one, undaunted by accidents, " I shall have twenty dogs
and twenty cats, and they shall play with each other."
Ten minutes after she had made this announcement I
found her chuckling to herself, as with a child's vivid
imagination she surveyed the diverting prospect.
In India we have various round games, graceful
and quaint in their way, but these grow monotonous,
and then romps are the order of the day. Rukma
(Radiance) is a born mimic, and as Indian life lends
itself to caricature she has a fair field for her activi-
ties. Games are devised which would puzzle a Western.
One of these includes an elephant- made of slatey-blue
raiment and children fastened together. This creature,
with a bell, which tinkles in an agitated manner
at every step, hung round its neck, stalks about the
playground, waving his trunk hungrily in the direction
of the younger juveniles, who never tire of the charming
262 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
horror of it. The joy of being allowed to shriek as the
alarming shape approaches never seems to pall. "For
when you make a very tremendous noise, you get a
lovely fearful feeling," was the lucid explanation offered
for the delirious rout.
Occasionally the dolls, who for the most part live in
boxes, are produced and hung in cradles swung from
the trees. The effect of a dozen or so of these little
hammocks, made of bits over from their own little
garments, is very comical. Houses are arranged for
the sleepers, to be ready when they wake. These
houses follow the bungalow type. There is a central
room " for food and meetings," and two bedrooms, one
on each side. There is a verandah, with steps, and a
curl meant for decorative architecture finishes either
side of the steps. The kitchen, Indian fashion, is at a
little distance. As all this is made of mud, patted into
shape, on the raised model plan, with very low walls
and spaces for doors, you may easily make a mistake
and overlook the walls when invited to pay a visit.
Nothing more offends the general sense of propriety.
" You have stepped over the wall. That is wall. The
door is on the other side. Please come in by the door."
Grown-up people, though so stupid, have some
redeeming features. It is they who give the dolls.
Also they kindly mend them when, as often happens,
limbs come off. Here, judging by previous experience,
one would expect a great display of sympathy with the
sorely injured treasure. There is nothing of the sort.
Strong common sense comes to the rescue, and the most
heroic operative measures are regarded with perfect
" IS SHE A DIFFERENT SPECIES ? " 263
equanimity. The maternal mind thus disengaged has
time to moralise. " Are you mending my doll's leg to
the glory of God ? " was a question put to Mrs. Walker
one day, when, seeing a better way to repair the damage,
she unpicked her first attempt and began again. I was
told about it afterwards : " The Ammal did it beautifully
at first. I would not have unpicked it. I think she
must truly have been mending my doll's leg to the
glory of God."
There is a feeling among white people that brown
people always admire them. This is a delusion. They
do admire our colour, and an ivory-skinned child will be
described as " like a white person's child," but they do
not always admire our behaviour, and they are extremely
observant. " Is she a different species ? " was the ques-
tion suggested by close observation of a lady in the train
whose travelling manners were not of the finest. " She
is not like the Animals I know," and an extensive list was
enumerated. " Is she a real Ammal, or is she a different
species ? "
Anything like condescension is at once detected and
severely criticised. " Oh yes, perhaps she is very nice.
But she looked so " — and an all too faithful reproduction
of the air of languid interest, or distant kindness, follows.
" Now So-and-so," naming another visitor, " was different.
She is our friend. Amma, what made the difference at
the first ? " — a question striking at the difficult root of
things. But the Indian mind, though critical enough, is
very charitable. "Perhaps she couldn't help being so,
being made so " ; this being a kindly conclusion, satisfied
everybody.
264 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
New light on old texts might be the safe and sober
title to a chapterful of sundries. " Do you know about
the devil's beginning ? " This was Leela to the Firefly,
whose eager " Tell me, Leela ! " started Leela at a trot.
The idea behind the story poured forth was evidently a
Tamil reception, such as occurs on New Year's Day and
other special occasions, when chairs are placed for us, and
we have to sit and be feted. The chief entertainment is
singing. The village, or as much of it as can find room,
swarms in round us, and sings vigorously. The children
contrive to squeeze themselves beside us between the
chairs, or to climb into our laps, and so receive the
reflected glory of the feting. Sometimes we have as
many as a dozen such receptions in one day, for outside
villages come in turn. Such days, the children would
tell you, are very glorious.
" In the beginning," began Leela in unctuous tones,
" the bad devil was good. He was an angel. He lived
in heaven. One day all the angels came to sing to God.
Then the devil was angry. He got angrier and angrier.
He was very rude to God." Here Leela seemed to freeze
all over, and her voice sounded quite deep and awful.
Irreverence was far from her intention. " That bad, bad
devil said : ' I won't stand before God's chair any more,
and I won't sing to God any more. / want to sit in God's
chair, and make God sing to me ! ' ' There was a perfectly
horrified pause, as the enormity of the transgression
became evident. " So God took him, and tumbled him
down out of heaven, and he was turned into the devil."
There was another solemn pause, then Leela con-
tinued cheerfully, " And we each have a little devil ; he
"So HE GIVES us BOTH" 265
says, ' Tell lies, steal, be cross.' And we each have a
little Angel ; he says, ' Don't tell lies, don't steal, don't
be cross.' That devil is a nasty little devil." " Which
is more necessary," inquired the practical Firefly of the
Elf who just then appeared, " our little Angel, or our
Animal?" ("mother"). "Well," returned the Elf
impartially, " I think both are necessary. Our little
Angel is very important ; he looks at God's face for us.
But then Jesus knows we couldn't do without a mother.
So He gives us both." There was a vehement raid upon
me, and the book which was considered too absorbing
was triumphantly carried off. " It was nice and kind of
Jesus," said little Leela in cooing tones ; " when I see
Him I will run up to Him fast, and give Him hugs and
kisses." " But He is God," said one of the small elders
soberly. " But He is our Lord Jesus too," said another
quickly, feeling for Leela, whose loving little heart had
meant nothing wrong. Leela looked grateful, and after-
wards confided that she always gave Him kisses in her
prayers. Then from these heights there was a sudden
drop. " I want to see the bad devil a corpse" said the
Firefly, with startling energy.
Lola to Leela, on the institution of the Sabbath, was
as follows : " And it was Friday, and God finished making
everything, and He was tired. So He made Saturday
into a resting-day ; and it was Sunday. But a long
time afterwards it was changed. For Jesus was very, very
tired. He had been hurt so dreadfully, that was why
He was tired ; and it was Friday. And He rested in a
cave on Saturday, which was Sunday. And then on the
next day He got up. And He changed that day into
266 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
Sunday. And I think it was because He wanted another
day for resting, because he was so very, very tired. So
that day is our Sunday now." Lola is a frivolous young
person, wholly bent on the things of this life, but there
was a note of sympathy in her voice as she mentioned
the tiredness of Jesus ; and Leela, who is a tender little
soul, felt it at once, and her eyes filled. She was not
comforted till I had told the story over again, somewhat
otherwise. I wonder if the same thought has struck
other children : the day of rest was changed because our
Lord needed a second day's rest.
A Bible class in which room is given for questions
and remarks is a very fruitful field. You feel the richer
for an experience such as I had to-day over the first few
verses of Genesis.
The light of the first day was made by the shining of
God's face. This is evident, for the sun was not created
then. The third day's work suggested tails. I had
been explaining about the change of the great forest
trees into coal, now dug out of mines. " That's where
the people live who have tails," was the staggering
interposition. I found they all shared the idea. Under
the earth is a great hole, and the people who live there
cultivate tails. As for the fourth day's work, as every
town and village in the world requires its own sun and
moon and stars, a complete sky system all to itself, that
day must have been a very busy day. This was an
equally general idea. How else could it be explained
that the sun rises at different times in different places ?
Of course it is a different sun. When the fact, or as
much of it as their small minds could grasp, dawned
How RAIN is MADE 267
upon the children, their astonishment was interesting.
They looked at one another, counted up the different
villages represented : " One sun to all these ! What a
big sun it must be ! "
Kain is made by the angels : this was the last con-
tribution to science. There is a great big well in
Heaven, and when the angels see that the flowers of the
world are thirsty, they go to the well and draw much
water and pour it down. I expected the little voice
would continue that the flowers, refreshed, looked up
and thanked the angels, but it stopped short of this
pretty conclusion, and added with deeper feeling : " Then
the angels are all very happy because they are helping
God."
But the time of all times to get into the very inside
mind of an Indian child is in the wonderful sunset
hour when all Nature breathes softly, and just a little
later, when the stars come out. Sometimes one gets
shocks. I had always thought children heard God's
voice in the thunder and were awed. Not at all. " The
clouds are quarrelling. If they don't take care they'll
spill," was the painfully practical remark tha* blew the
dust from my eyes. So even in the silent glory of
sunset, and even under the solemn stars, one must be
prepared for prose as well as poetry.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Green Clouds and the Lamps of God's
Village
" ~V7"OU stopped so long to look at that \ " said a boy
-L to me one day. It was in a lane arched with
palm. There was a well on one side, in an
open space, fenced in by rough reed work. On the
reeds in the sunshine sat a pair of kingfishers. The
flash of blue on the brown in the sunshine by the old
grey-walled well is a joy just to remember. But my
stopping to look at it was something quite out of reach
of the boy, who stood in the shadow side under the
palms.
This is what most of our children are like when first
they come to us ; but very soon they begin to care for
the lovely and curious strewn so lavishly over the plain
of South Indian life. Often now an excited little
creature comes flying in, impetuous, full of some new
discovery. Once it was a beetle rolling a ball much
bigger than himself to a hiding-place under a tree.
The children wanted to help the beetle, and they made
a smooth track for him ; but he obstinately persisted in
kicking it by the rough way of his choice. Once it
was a weed, as we disrespectfully call our flower guests
2C8
GREEN CLOUDS 269
who come without being invited. " It has thirteen
different colours, not counting the stalk." Once it was
a praying mantis, whose devotional manners charmed the
whole community, and suggested any number of moral
reflections. Often it is a new mimic insect, like a straw,
or a leaf, or a bit of bark. Once it was green clouds.
" Green clouds ! Oh, you little green girl ! " I said
not in the least believing. But the earnest, " Indeed,
they are green," and the tugging little hands prevailed.
The clouds were really green ; a sort of undefined sea-
green, like the colour of a wave before it rolls over, just
as the crest curls ready to break. They were lighted
with lemon colour towards the under edge, and darkened
into grey above, and they were floating in violet air.
Then through that pure violet the sickle of the new
moon curved, sharp against its transparency. Jupiter,
at some seasons very large and brilliant here, shone
above the moon ; and the little filmy cloudlets swept
across it, making halos as they passed.
The splendour and the silence of the movement held
us still. I think we both felt we might miss something
if we spoke. Slowly the lemon light faded ; the cloud
colours melted into a blue that was almost electric.
Every moment the moon cut clearer, and the silver of
the planet grew more radiant. And the little halos
flying round it were like rainbows caught and twisted
into rings.
At last the child spoke, her brown eyes fixed wist-
fully on the fading glory of the sky. " I thought He
was coming back," she said. Then I found she had
fancied to herself that our Lord went home on a sunset
270 GREEN CLOUDS AND LAMPS
cloud, pink and soft and beautiful, with gold from the
inside shining through. " And whenever the clouds are
just like that, I look to see if He is not there. And I
have looked so often, and He hasn't come yet." But
other little voices broke in upon us — " What is the sky
made of ? Is it a real roof ? Look at the big star !
Oh, it is running ! Where is it running to ? Why has
it got a coloured crown ? "
In the warm South land the spirit of the moonlight
and the starlight need not be shut out unkindly. We
sit outside with it, and sleep outside beside it. The
toil and the littleness of the day pass out of memory
in that large calm, as the heat that has passed is
forgotten in the cool. The juniors generally go to bed
early, but sometimes they break bounds and sit on the
sand in the courtyard, in the starshine, very wide awake.
Then, if you happen to be conveniently exhausted and
unfit for conversation, the compassionate children will
leave you in peace and forget your near existence. You
have the chance then, if you care to take it, to drop
for awhile into the world that is never far away, though
we so seldom seem to find the little bypath into it.
" I want to string all the stars together on a thread
and make a necklace." This was Lola. "You can't,"
said the Firefly, scandalised. "They aren't yours."
" Whose are they ? " Lola sounded defiant. " They're
God's. They're the lamps of God's village." " Where
is God's village ? " " Up there." " What is it called ? "
" It's Heaven, of course." " And it's up there ? " Lola
pointed up with one fat forefinger, and looked search-
ingly at the Firefly, who answered with confidence,
How DOES GOD'S VILLAGE STAY UP? 271
" Yes, up there ; high up." Then Lola, who at the date
of this story was considerably younger than when she
instructed Leela, as already narrated, gathered herself
together and demanded, " How does it stay up ? "
This was disconcerting. The Firefly, at that time
also a recent arrival, realised her limitations. Only a
few days previously she had been as puzzled as Lola
over a similar problem. We were at the Harvest
Festival. The people were bringing offerings of sacks of
rice, huge baskets of solidified brown sugar, many fowls,
and some goats. The Firefly was enjoying it thoroughly
till a question smote her. " Who are all the things
for ? " Surprised, we told her they were for God.
" But I thought He lived in Heaven. How are they
going to get the things there ? " So, feeling unequal to
clear explanation as to how God's village stayed up, the
Firefly appealed to the Mouse, who honestly answered
that she did not know, and was proceeding to expatiate
upon the spiritual joys of the better world, when Lola
interrupted anxiously, "What do the people in God's
village have to eat ? "
The Mouse, unlike the Imp of old, is nine, and good.
She cuddled Lola in her arms, and explained that she
was rather young to understand all about Heaven.
Even she, the elderly Mouse, did not understand every-
thing. But one thing was perfectly clear : Heaven was a
beautiful lovely place like a beautiful lovely garden. Lola
wagged her head approvingly. " Are there plantains ? "
(bananas). The Mouse was not sure. There is a tree, and
twelve different kinds of fruit grow on it — a gasp of joy
from Lola. And every month the fruit ripens — another
272 GREEN CLOUDS AND LAMPS
gasp from Lola. And the wall all round God's village
shines, and the gates are made of big glistening pearls,
and the village streets are gold. " What are the plates
made of ? " was Lola's next, interjected as soon as she
could find room. " And is the rice always hot ? And
how many kinds of curry ? "
Lola's unchristian greed distressed the Mouse. " You
shouldn't be always thinking about your food-bag, Lola,"
she said with some severity. " Will it be hot ? " once
more interposed the irreverent child. The other children
were listening rather keenly. In the monsoon season
they have hot rice twice a day. At other times only
once. The other meals consist of cold rice with con-
diment. Hot rice always, with an appropriate variety
of curry, would be bliss indeed. The Mouse hesitated.
" I think if there is rice in Heaven it will be always hot.
And I think if there is curry, there will be a great many
kinds. But it isn't in the Bible, and I don't know. As
for the plates," she added in a more decided tone, " it is
very silly to ask about them at all. Who can tell what
they are made of ? " Nobody ventured a guess. Their
vocabulary's top word, gold, having been already requisi-
tioned to describe the mere streets, what word was left to
describe the plates, which must be unspeakably superb.
But the Mouse was uncomfortable upon these lower
levels, and she made a strenuous effort to drag the un-
willing Lola up : " Listen, Lola ! " she said, and gave that
plump person a shake. " Jesus, our own Lord Jesus, will
be there, and we shall see Him, and He will smile upon
us, and that will make Heaven's sunshine. And God
will stroke our faces — so — to take away all the marks
WHAT SORT OF WINGS? 273
of crying from our faces. And nobody will have fever,
and we shall never have to go to bed. And there is a
beautiful river." — " How do we get there ? Are there
steps ? " inquired Lola, much impressed by this jumble.
" No ; Jesus comes aiid carries us up. Or the angels
come : that's what happened to a poor sick man Jesus
tells us about ; and that's what people call dying. Or
else Jesus will come for everybody all at once, and we
won't die, we will all rise quickly, and fly and fly straight
up to Him, up and up ! " " Shall we have wings ?
What sort of wings ? " Lola was quite stirred. The
children have not been brought up upon pictures, and so
have not interpolated the idea of wings into the Bible
narrative. But then, the act of flying is intimately
connected with wings. There was a moment's entangle-
ment of talk, out of which the voice of the very sane
Mouse emerged : " How would wings be fastened on ? I
don't think we shall have wings. It says nothing about
them in the Bible." " If the angels who came down to
the world had had wings," remarked another sagely,
" people wouldn't have mistaken them for common
people. But they could fly all right." " And Jesus
hadn't wings, but He flew up into the cloud," said
another and more decided voice. " So wings aren't
necessary." But Lola seemed disappointed. She wanted
wings ; white ducks' wings.
Later the conversation turned to the Parable of the
Kich Man and Lazarus, which fascinates Eastern children,
to whom the dramatic appeals. The picture of Lazarus
sitting happily on Abraham's lap, as the Tamil puts it,
had captivated them, and they considered gravely upon
18
274 GREEN CLOUDS AND LAMPS
whose lap they would choose to sit, " not counting our
Lord Jesus, for of course we would all choose His."
One chose Elijah's, because he was so brave. Another,
Abraham's. " You can't ; Lazarus has it," was crushing.
Another chose John's, because he was a loving man.
The Elf chose Ignatius, because he was a martyr. But
the Firefly would have none of these. " I'm not going
to not choose Jesus," she said sturdily, "He's the only
One I know in Heaven." " Everybody will want His,"
somebody objected. The Firefly gave my hand a
squeeze : " Won't He keep just a little room for me ? "
The frankly realistic way these children deal with
the unseen may rather startle some, and their
strong religious and Biblical bent may perplex others.
There is nothing perplexing in it. India is naturally
devout ; the Bible is the children's favourite story-book :
these two facts explain much. We have not many good
story-books in Tamil, and the few that we have often
cross the frontier into the grown-up people's kingdom.
The Bible stories the children know best never do.
Then, too, the book is new to most of them, and till
they know it thoroughly other books can wait. So it
comes to pass that at present everything shapes that
way. Everything is coloured by some Scriptural reflec-
tion— even punishments, as I found only yesterday ; for
five naughty little sinners had eaten forbidden berries,
and to ward off possible consequences had a dose of
quinine all round ; which quinine, to enforce the moral,
had to be slowly munched. Quinine, dry, is not
delicious. The five made faces. Then the ringleader
remarked : " After Adam and Eve had eaten the for-
WAS THE POWDER QUININE? 275
bidden fruit I wonder if God filled it with powder to
keep anybody else from eating it, and I wonder if that
powder was quinine ? "
Among the larger events of her early life the Elf
reckons a sharp attack of enteric. "My typhoid," she
calls it, with unchallenged sense of possession. The
weary convalescence was brightened by a doll which
opens and shuts its eyes. For some time after its
arrival and delightful laborious unpacking, the Elf was
speechless. By the time she recovered voice everyone
was busy, so she addressed the treasure, which was
propped up in bed beside her: "Ah, my doll, I am
going to love you very much. Oh, I do love you, my
dear doll " — sounds of kissing followed — " but I must
not want to keep you for myself entirely. I must be
willing to give you up. I must not listen to the feeling
in my inside that you are my very own. But you
really are my own " — more fervent kissing — " the
Lady of the hills sent you to me to be rny very own,"
the relief in the voice was unmistakable, " so it doesn't
matter what that feeling says. . . . But I must not
be like Haman. He wanted all good things to come
only to him, so he got a great disappointment."
Here I lost the thread of the discourse which, I think,
must have got into knots, and perhaps Hainan's fate
proved depressing, for the sermon closed abruptly with,
" Now I must not be at all like that . . . But, ah, my
doll, you are my doll ! . . . But I will give you to my
younger sisters when I die ! "
One feels inclined to leave you with no more serious
view of the children than their playground shows, but
276 GREEN CLOUDS AND LAMPS
they are too dear to be left like that. They are not
children in a picture just to be looked at, or children in
a story sure to end happily. They are living children,
with more than merely childish faults. Each who was,
or whose parents were, connected with Temple service
as the word is understood here, is possessed of an
inheritance unexplored as yet, but close at hand.
Sometimes it is as if the Power to whom the child
had been dedicated, suddenly fastened upon her, drew
her over the dividing fence into that inheritance, worked
upon her will till she wills to be there, reasserted its
claim in fact, very really. These children come from
" dim uttermost depths which no Angel hath known,"
nor any English woman, save those who go out with the
Shepherd to seek the sheep that is most of all lost ; and
even they have not plumbed the abyss that opens under
Satan's throne. There is a difference between those who
ever were in that abyss and those who never were ; and
the grace and the victory wrought by our God, and the
light when it illuminates are all the more to the praise
of His glory and all the more a joy. But we ask
you not to forget the background, and the possibility it
holds.
One of Christina Eossetti's poems expresses so tenderly
and so completely much that we desire for these little
Temple children, that one cannot do better for them
than copy it here. Just the few who are with us can
pray the prayer for themselves, but the many not found
yet need you to put yourself down quite low beside
them, and pray the little prayer for them, as mothers do
for babies too small to say the words :
"FiND, EMBRACE us" 277
"0 Lord, seek us, 0 Lord, find us
In Thy patient care ;
Be Thy Love before, behind us,
Round us everywhere :
Lest the god of this world blind us,
Lest he speak us fair,
Lest he forge a chain to bind us,
Lest he bait a snare.
Turn not from us, call to mind us,
Find, embrace us, hear ;
Be Thy Love before, behind us,
Round us everywhere."
And to this will you add an earnest word, that each
one saved may grow up to be a saviour of others, a
blessing to India.
" If the Lord pull, you must not hold when He draweth."
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.
(The sick baby to its mother.)
" ' 0 Mother, mother ! loose thy prayer,
Christ's name hath made it strong,
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
With its most loving cruelty,
From floating my new soul along
The happy heavenly air.
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
In all this dark, upon this dull
Low earth, by only weepers trod,
It bindeth me, it holdeth me !
Mine Angel looketh sorrowful
Upon the face of God.1
Oh you
Earth's tender and impassioned few,
Take courage to entrust your love
To Him so named, Who guards above
Its ends, and shall fulfil !
Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit our narrow hearts, away
In His broad loving will."
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
From "Isobel's Child."
278
CHAPTER XXXIV
Loosed
"VTEAKLY a year has passed since most of the fore-
-Ll going chapters were written. Now the three
babies who made the nursery such a busy place
have left us, for what the children call " Jesus' upstairs
nursery."
The two who went first, swept off by the first touch of
a cold-weather epidemic, were so delicate that they could
never have been as other children are. Little Amethyst
never grew except in gladness, and the Sunflower seemed
to wither as she grew. But we took such care of them
that we thought in our ignorance death could not find a
way in to reach them. Little Amethyst, our first Temple
baby, went first. It was night. I had carried her out
into the courtyard, as if relief from the clutch of the
pain could be won for her outside. The light little body
lay still in my arms, warm and breathing, but so still
after the first sudden pain had passed, that I did not
know the moment when she left me, did not know her
gone till I looked down, and the moonlight showed so
white on the empty little face. Then in that first
moment a sudden doubt swept over, like a cold, cold
wave — has never a mother known it ? — Where has she
279
280 LOOSED
gone, my baby ? Is it true she lives somewhere ? Or is
it all a myth, a dream ? Is she nowhere, nothing, dead ?
Next morning very early, a happy voice surprised me.
I was not expecting happy voices, for this first break in
our family had meant more to us all than some will
understand. " AmmiH ! have you seen it ? Her verse
comes in the reading!" It was Star, her face bright
with the discovery that the Scripture Union portion held
our baby's verse that day : " And the foundations of the
city were garnished with precious stones . . . The twelfth
an Amethyst."
As we carried her that same morning to her little
grave as if to her cot, the village people gathered to
look at her ; but they would hardly believe her dead, the
little lips were so red and sweet, just curving in a smile.
And we knew with an assurance beyond the reach of
doubt, that the baby was not really dead but only lifted
over to the sunny side of life. Safe, safe, alive and well,
with Him that liveth and was dead, and is alive for ever-
more. This, the first little Temple child, so far as is
known, ever laid to rest as a Christian child, was sown
as a seed that morning in sure and certain hope of the
Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Sunflower was lying between life and death when
we carried our Amethyst babe to her grave. For a week
longer, day and night we toiled to save that little life,
but it passed from us and we felt bereft ; and the only
one left, our treasure child, became trebly a treasure to
us all, and we held her tight, so tight, in our arms, as if
our poor weak human arms could hold her when the word
had come, " Loose her and let her go."
UNSHADOWED 281
Up till the month of that fatal sickness she had been
a perfectly healthy child, a bit of loveliness and joy,
whole and dear, from the hand of God. On the last
unshadowed day before the epidemic came, we made a
feast in the new room. The children sat in rows on the
floor, gay as a garden of living flowers. " Indraneela !
Indraneela ! " they kept calling from side to side and
end to end, and the baby laughed and clapped her hands,
and tried to walk to every one who called ; the pretty
little dancing feet were never a moment still. Every-
thing seemed bright that day, for the delicate babes were
fairly well, and all the children were good and well ; and
the treasure babe, who was always well, was fuller than
ever of joyousness. The sweet little ways of a babe
beloved, untroubled by any hurting thing, seemed sweeter
than ever that happy day, as we played altogether, and
all with her, and she held out her arms to one and
another, and leaped and laughed and tried to talk, the
merriest of us all. Then when the feast was over we
went into the courtyard, and the baby clapped her little
hands as the wind stirred the leaves of the tulip tree,
and blew its flowers down upon her ; and the children
made a little crown, and crowned their baby queen. One
sees it all so distinctly to-day : the gleeful children, the
little child with brown eyes shining with excitement and
delight, the little crown of pink blossoms on the fluffy
dark hair.
Only a fortnight later, but it seemed as if years had
passed since that bright evening, Indraneela lay too
quietly upon my mother's knee. The baby loved her
Atah (baby word for grandmother), who had come to
282 LOOSED
stay with us for a year, and was nowhere more contented
than on her Atah's knee. That evening, as she lay
watching everything we did, she almost seemed to under-
stand, and to be trying to help us, so wise were all her
little ways. Then when the sound of the children
singing on their way home from school reached us in
the nursery, she raised her hands as she always did at
the sound of singing, and tried to clap. These little
signs of intelligence helped to blind us to what was
coming. And we went on hoping — hoping against hope.
So it was as if she tried to tell us. Six of the
children were ill in another room. We divided the
nursing; Star and I shared the early morning with
the babe. Just before dawn she called, and, holding
her little hand as high as she could reach, she pointed
up. Then she pointed to a toy musical-box which we
always kept beside her, and when it was given to her
she turned the handle till the first notes came. She
had often tried before, but never quite succeeded in
turning the handle herself. Now she stopped and
looked up with those joyous eyes, so unlike a baby's
eyes in stedfastness of expression:
" Let me to my heaven go !
A little harp me waits thereby,
A harp whose strings are golden all,
And tuned to music spherical,
Hanging on the green life tree
Where no willows ever be.
Shall I miss that harp of mine?"
She held out her little hands to be kissed, and then,
tired, fell asleep. . . .
" She was not an Earth-child," eaid the kindly village
WOULD GIVE HIM THIS" 283
women as they came and looked at her, "we always
said so. She was beautiful beyond our common children.
She was a little Heaven-child who came down here to
stay for awhile. And now she has gone to her own place."
She was the child of an ancient royal race ; every
dainty way and pretty imperious gesture showed it.
There was something very noble about the little child:
she was our best. The children were not prepared for
what had happened. We led them to the courtyard
garden where they had crowned her queen. It opens
off the nursery where she lay asleep, the little head
half - turned upon the pillow, the little hands curled
softly as in life. The children looked at the flowers —
poor, sick nasturtiums which do not flourish here ; blue
convolvulus bells, hanging all over the trellis ; and one
single lily, the first we had ever had, which had blos-
somed that same morning. " If Jesus came to our
garden to-day, what flower should we give to Him ?
A poor, little sick nasturtium which we do not want
at all ? or a pretty blue convolvulus which we would
not miss very much ? " But the children ran to the
lily : " We would give Him this," they said. Over and
over it came to us, " We would give Him this : we would
give Him this." Thou art worthy, 0 Lord Jesus, to
receive this, our Best.
The doubt that had chilled one's heart before had not
dared to come again. It was a dart from the enemy.
" The twelfth an Amethyst " had come between, like a
shield made of a jewel. But even as Indraneela passed,
the memory of that simple consolation came to us, and
that afternoon this happened :
284 LOOSED
That while I was resting in my room, trying to gather
strength for the parting with the cherished little form
that must be made before sunset, I listened, hardly
listening, to Mr. Walker teaching his convert boys on
the verandah. They were reading aloud : " And Aaron
shall bear their names before the Lord upon his two
shoulders for a memorial." Verses followed about the
chain of pure gold, the wreathen work, the breastplate
with its settings of stones, even four rows of stones :
$ ' " The second row shall be an emerald, a Sapphire"
/ *? - Safe, safe for evermore, set on His breast, close to His
heart, His Sapphire.
CHAPTER XXXV
Persist
" So look up, friends ! You who indeed
Have possessed in your house a sweet piece
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need
Be more earnest than others are, — speed
Where they loiter, persist where they cease."
WE could not have uncovered so personal, and, after
all, so common a hurt, had we not been pressed
by the hope that the story of the loosing of
these little lives might loose some prayers. Will not
some who read entreat with a new intensity for the life
of these innocent children, devoted in their infancy to the
service of the gods ? Most of us have little loved ones
with Jesus. We "must need be more earnest than
others are, speed where they loiter, persist where they
cease." So, at least, it seemed to us after the numbness
of grief had passed, and we could think again.
At first it seemed as if it would never pass — as if
comfort could never come. We just wanted Indraneela,
nothing else. One day, some quaint words from old
Samuel Eutherford came with such healing in them,
that because there are so many sorrowful people in the
world, and perhaps some sorrowful one may read this,
I copy them :
285
286 PERSIST
" You have lost a child : nay, she is not lost to you
who is found to Christ ; she is not sent away, but only
sent before, like unto a star, which, going out of our sight,
doth not die or vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.
You see her not, yet she doth shine in another country.
If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of
time that she hath gotten of eternity ; and you have to
rejoice that you have now some treasure laid up in
Heaven. . . . There is less of you out of Heaven that
the child is there" We never understood before how
true in its simplicity is the familiar verse : " Where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Another word that had comfort in it was Golden's.
We were walking home together after church. Golden was
speaking of little Lotus, who had been with my mother
during the service : " You had not sore longing for her,"
she said, "although she was not with you." "Was it
not different ? " I answered, for the moment not seeing
her thought : " I knew I should have her again as soon
as the service was over." " Will you not have Indra-
neela again as soon as the service is over ? "
Sometimes a word lights up a truth. There had not
been solid comfort in the view so often taken of a
treasure lent reclaimed.
"Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render Him with patience what He lent,"
Milton's beautiful lines to a mother "On the death
of a fair infant," had soothing in them, and yet there
was somehow the inconsequence of an uncompleted
thought. It was joy to have anything so dear to send ;
but had she been only lent ?
"GIVE HER THE GLORY OF GOING ON" 287
" He lends not, but gives to the end
As He loves to the end. If it seem
That He draws back a gift, comprehend
"Pis to add to it rather, amend,
And finish it up to your dream."
There is hearts-ease in the knowledge that the gifts of
our God are without repentance — irrevocable. Often since
then, when we have found ourselves picturing what she
would have been by now, if we had been allowed to keep
her here — such a bonnie little girl, just learning to talk
—and winced with the sharp pain of it, we have pulled
up, remembering how much sweeter than our picturing
she must be there, where the Hands that fashioned her
so perfectly at first have their way with her, un-
hindered by any touch of ours or any influence of earth.
' Tis to add to it rather, amend and finish it up to your
dream " ; the words mean much if they mean anything.
And the gift will be all the dearer for such keeping
until the service is over.
When we went back to the empty nursery, and folded
up the babys' little things and put them away, we felt
as if we could not begin all over again. But we were
shown that what we had been through was only meant
to make us the more earnestly Persist. So we set apart
the sixth of each month, the date of our little Indra-
neela's passing, as a Prayer day for the Temple children,
that they may be found and redeemed from Temple
service ; and for ourselves that we may love them accord-
ng to the love of the Lord. Sometimes in far-away
places, upon that very day God has signally worked for
the deliverance of a little one in danger, and always
He has met us and renewed our strength. We have
288 PERSIST
never had another Indraneela, but our empty nursery
has been filled to overflowing. " Impossible " things have
been done. Children dedicated in suchwise that deliver-
ance seemed, as the Tamil says, " out of hand's reach,"
are safely with us now. When such things happen we
know Whose hand has worked.
Of late months a most helpful development has been
effected through the comradeship of the medical mis-
sionaries at Neyoor. We have a branch nursery there
now, with Ponammal (Golden) in charge of five nurses,
and an absorbing family of the tiniest of our babies. The
relief of knowing that, should they need it, all the help
that skill and kindness can command will be given to
those babies is something that perhaps only a mother
who has known the anxiety of a large little family far
away from reliable help will understand. We have no
words to thank the medical missionaries and their Indian
fellow-workers, whose kindness has no limits.
Another year lies between the last chapter and this.
For we can only write in odd corners of time, and some-
times time does not seem to have any odd corners.
Quiet is even rarer. Just now I am sharing a room
with seven very young people — the middle-aged babies
we call them — and the only possible quiet is when
they all elect to go to sleep together, a happiness
not granted every day. The year that has passed since
Indraneela left us has held some rainy days. But
perhaps the little seed of the Temple children's work
must be watered much before it will spring and grow.
Perhaps, if we only knew it, all sheaves have such rain
at the root. But to-day, as I look up from the writing
THE JOY OF SHEAVES 289
to the dear little seven so kindly all asleep, and then
through the western window with its glorious mountain
view, to the other nursery where the older little ones are
settling down to their midday rice and curry, and when
I stop to remember just where each might have been
to-day if things had been otherwise, then I feel no
watering could be too costly, if only in the end there
may be the joy of sheaves.
The joy of sheaves — we have had it already; and
when the time comes to tell the South Indian Temple
children's story in full, if God will, we will share it with
you. The story is a story by itself. Before it can be
told there must be much laborious digging in places out
of sight. So we do not attempt more now than these
few simple nursery chapters, written for the comfort
of those, known and unknown, who are praying that
something may be done. And there is larger comfort
to offer: India is so great a word that in writing we
confine ourselves on purpose to the South, but we rejoice
to remember that elsewhere there are those whose eyes
are open to look for these little children, and to work
for them and save them. Soon we trust our dream will
be fulfilled, and each Province where the need is found
to exist will have its own nursery, and its own band
of volunteer Indian searchers.
For, in the South at least, the actual work of dis-
covering the children must be done by the Indian
workers. Most emphatically, no one else can do it.
Our part is to inspire others, to hope through all dis-
couragement, to do the detail work behind the scenes,
and to pray, and set all who have hearts to whom the
19
290 PERSIST
helplessness of a little child carries its own appeal,
praying as they have never prayed for the life of these
young children. Our great need then, is wise and
earnest Indian fellow-workers. One by one those upon
whom we can depend are being given to us, and now in
many Temple towns and villages we have friends on the
watch for little ones in danger. One of the Overweights
of Joy to-day is the knowledge that the memory of our
little Indraneela is being used to touch hearts to more
purposeful effort, and a love that will not give in. One, a
pastor's wife who lately helped in the salvation of a little
child, writes : " I never knew how very difficult it would
be to save these children until I began to try. Then I
despaired. I found Satan at every point. I nearly gave
up hope. I began to think it has gone on so long —
this traffic — it will go on to the end. Who can stop it ?
What can we do ? But then the remembrance of little
Indraneela, and a letter I read about her, came to me,
and revived my determination, for it made my whole
heart tender for these little ones. And I could not
bear to think they must go on perishing."
God make our hearts tender, and revive our deter-
mination, and give it to us to care so that we shall not
be able to bear that the children go on perishing. And
though for many of us hereafter the laughter of life must
have tears at its heart, God give it to us to Persist.
The Song of the Lord
OUR story is told : how inadequately told no critic
will see more clearly than the writer, who has
stopped many times wishing some one else would
finish. If we have shown things truly we have shown a
battlefield. A hand has been lifted up against the throne
of the Lord. We look to you, our comrades, to lift up
other hands. " Explain the philosophy of prayer," write
some in answer to our reiterated petition, Pray. How can
we ? Who can ? We only know that " it came to pass
when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed. And
his hands were steady until the going down of the sun."
The Gloriosa superba is native to South India.
During the autumn rains you find it shooting in the
lane bordered thickly by huge cactus and aloe. Here
and there you see it in the open field. In the field it
will have a chance, you think ; but in the lane, crowded
down by cactus and aloe, great strong assertive things
with most fierce thorn and spike, what can a poor lily do
but give in and disappear ? A few weeks afterwards
you see a patch of colour on the field, you go and gather
handfuls of lovely lilies, and you revel in the tangle of
colour, a little bewilderment of delight. But the lane,
291
292 THE SONG OF THE LORD
go to the lane. There you see something far more satis-
fying, not only entangled colour, but all the grace of
form, God's full thought grown to perfection. Eight feet
up in the clear air, bright against the luminous blue, un-
furling its fire-flowers like banners of triumph, there is
the lily victorious. Each little delicate bud and leaf
seems as if filled with a separate keen little joy : the joy
of just being beautiful and free.
The Gloriosa will exist in the field, as it will exist in
the English hothouse, because it must. But it is not
happy there. There is no proper development. Give it
life, not just existence. Give it something to conquer.
Give it the thorn and the spike.
Sometimes it may seem to us that our prayer-life
would develop more easily under easier conditions. The
open field with no obstacle near — there the lily will
surely thrive. Look at the plant again. In itself it is
very fragile, but each leaf tapers tendril-wise, and asks
for something, however sharp, if only it may curl round
it and climb. The cactus and the aloe are not hind-
rances. The straight smooth stick stuck into the pot
in the hothouse will doubtless serve the same purpose.
But something is lost. There is not the charm that
springs from the sense of fine contrast. The easy and
the ordinary carries no exhilaration.
God's flowers grow best in places where only an
angel would have thought of planting them. Not pot-
bound, tidily, properly trained, is the lily at its fairest.
It wants to be where wild rough things crowd it round
with ruthless feet. It will not shrink back at fear of
their trample. It will touch them lightly, and laugh the
THE BATTLE is NOT MIMIC WAR 293
while, and at its touch the cactus and aloe show the pur-
pose hidden within them. Kuthless feet are helping
hands, lifting the lily up into the light. Perhaps if we
could shut our eyes on the world's way of looking at
things, and go to sleep with our head on a stone, we
should see all the obstructing, all the impossible, changed
as it were to a ladder beside us, set on the earth, the
top reaching heaven.
We need the flower's brave faith and dauntless resolu-
tion when we Bet ourselves to pray. The battle is not
mimic war. The evolution, intrigue, impact, are most
tremendous realities. And yet, looking not at some
little picked regiment, but widely over the army of God,
does it not appear that a spirit foreign to the soldier has
now infected us, and so dealt with us that what the first
soldier-missionary meant by conflict, whether in service
or prayer, is something we hardly understand, and the
battle-cries of God's elder warriors sound harshly in our
ears. Is there not something lacking in nerve, and sinew,
and muscle, and bone ? Do we not see some things
through a mist and a glamour, knowing not, yea refusing
to know it — for that spirit has dulled our soul's vision
and obscured it — that it is but a mist and a glamour ?
If we give that influence its way we shall find before
long that the foe behind the trenches looks like a friend
in an interesting disguise. And the sword in our hand
will shimmer away, like a sword-blade in a fairy tale, and
the soldier-spirit will vanish :
"Braver souls for truth may bleed
Ask us not of noble deed 1
Small our share in Christ's redemption —
From His war we claim exemption.
294 THE SONG OF THE LORD
Not for us the cup was drained;
Not for us the crown of thorn
On His bleeding brow was borne :
Not for us the spear was stained
With the blood from out His side ;
Not for us the Crucified
Let His hands and feet be torn !
On the list we come but low :
Not for us the cross was taken,
Us no bugle call can waken
To the combat, soldier fashion."
We would not say it. We consider it bad taste. But
do we never live it ? Consider : let us view ourselves in
the light of that most awful Sacrifice. Do we believe in
Calvary ? What difference does it make that we believe ?
How does this belief affect the spending of our one posses-
sion— life ? Are we playing it away ? Does it strike us
as fanatical to do anything more serious ? Are we too
refined to be in earnest ? Too polite to be strenuous ?
Too loose in our hold upon eternal verities to feel with
real intensity ? Too cool to burn ? God open our eyes,
and touch our hearts, and break us down with the
thought of the Love that redeemed us, and a sight of
souls as He sees them, and of ourselves as we are, and
not as people suppose we are, lest we sail in some
pleasure boat of our own devising over the gliding waters
that glide to the river of death.
Ruskin once made a remark for which he was counted
mad : " I cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals,
nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of
the morning sky has become hateful to me, because of
the misery that I know of, and see signs of where I know
it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly.
Therefore I will endure it no longer quietly ; but hence-
forward, with any few or many who will help, do my
poor best to abate this misery." And again came scath-
ing words, almost forgotten now : " You might sooner get
lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion
out of your modern English religion."
We have seldom touched on the deeper misery we
know of and see signs of, because there are some notes
which cannot bear to be struck twice : and because not
pity, but obedience, is the staying force. We would
not draw one to come by the slight thread of pity, or
by the other, still more slender, sentimental love. The
refrain of some sweet hymn, the touching description of
sorrowful eyes, and a wistfulness inexpressible — these
things have voices which call, but the power that holds
is not in them. Those of us who have come to Moslem
or heathen lands for life, if God will, know that what
keeps us here is something stronger than sympathy.
And yet, though we would not sound our strongest call
through it, misery, which no imagination can interpret
too bitterly, looks at us everywhere, and through every-
thing, with its mute appeal. There is ultimately only
one sure way to abate it. Are we showing the people
this one sure way ?
One of our older children lay very ill, unconscious.
In the morning, the crisis past, she said to me quietly :
" Last night I thought I was going to Heaven, and I was
so glad to go. But I was suddenly sorry. I thought
all the angels would look at me, and there would be
tears in their eyes, because I had loved our Lord Jesus
so long, and I had not brought one to Him." " So long "
296 THE SONG OF THE LORD
meant then a year and nine months, and she had, though
she did not know it, brought at least one to Him.
Would the angels look at us " with tears " if we went
Home to-night ?
Would they look at us " with tears " because of our
disobedience to our Master's clear command ? I
would not for a moment forget the work at home
with its immeasurable needs; but writing as I do
from the darkness, to those who are in what is, at least
by comparison, light, can I help pleading for more
light-bearers? What is it that keeps so many from
coming ? Is it fear that ties the feet ? Need there be
any fear in a coming unto Jesus ? " Lord, if it be Thou "
— if this drawing that I feel in my very heart be
Thou — " bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He
said, Come. . . . And he walked on the water to go to
Jesus." And afterwards, always afterwards, it is just
going on walking with Jesus.
Is the cord made of something far more powerful
than fear ? Is it human affection that holds us back ?
Then something is wrong which must be put right,
if our Lord is not to miss us from the place where He
means us to be. Oh that the cords that bind us, be
they strong as the seven green withes that were never
dried, may be as a thread of tow when it toucheth the
fire, shrivelled in a moment and forever by the pure fire
of that other Love that hath a most vehement flame !
Are we in utter earnest ? Are we quiet enough to
listen to the " sound of gentle stillness " which is the Voice
of God ? Do we see One coming toward us now, thorn-
crowned, pierced, stricken, with a face "so marred, more
WHEN THE BURNT-OFFERING BEGAN 297
than any man " ? Does He stoop and take the cord in
His hand, and look up with a question in His eyes ?
Do we say, " 0 Lord, it cannot be ; it would hurt too
much to be borne ! Not my own hurt, Thou knowest,
Lord : it is their hurt that is holding me ; I cannot ask
them to let me go ! " Does He turn His hand a little
then, and show the print of the nail ?
These words are not written lightly. They are
not froth words. They rise slowly, burning their way
out. This parting is a bitter thing, bitter as death itself
to some. We live again through a long-passed hour,
feel again the twilight about us, only the white of the
snow outside makes a light in the little room. And the
cold of the snow is upon us, and yet we are hot, and
the snow flakes are lava flakes falling. And through the
dimness and the coldness and the fire comes the Word as
it came then : " Go ye ... Go ye." But not only that one
word : promise upon promise comes for those who must
be asked to let go ; till looking up steadfastly we see
the glory of God, and Jesus.
Oh, more than an Overweight of Joy is theirs who
give to the Giving One. Mothers and fathers who have
given, do you not say so ? For eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared for them that love
Him well enough to pour out their treasure before Him.
We fear to cause our dear ones pain. Should we not
rather fear lest we hold them back from joy ? It was
when the Burnt-offering began that the Song of the
Lord began also.
In teaching the converts once, we were struck by the
298 THE SONG OF THE LORD
way in which the Song of the Lord is ever uudertoned
by pain. The Lamb was slain in the Father's heart from
the foundation of the world, and He looks upon the
daughter of Zion, brought out of her captivity redeemed
with the precious blood, and sings : " He will rejoice
over thee with joy. He will joy over thee with singing."
The Shepherd seeks the wandering sheep, and suffers in
the search ; and then comes the song : " Eejoice with
Me, for I have found My sheep which was lost." And
the only time we read of the Holy Spirit's joy is when
He speaks of the converts won "in much affliction."
Would there ever have been this Joy of God had there
been no sacrifice? Can we hold our dear ones back
from singing their part in the Song? Can we hold
back ourselves ? Would it not be joy worth any cost if
we could add even a bar, even a note, to the glorious
Song of the Lord !
" Joy is not gush : joy is not jolliness." The words
were spoken recently by one shortly afterwards called
to live out his own words. "Joy is simply perfect
acquiescence in God's will, because the soul delights
itself in God Himself. Christ took God as His God
and Father, and that brought Him at last to say, ' I
delight to do Thy will,' though the cup was the cross, in
such agony as no man knew. It cost Him blood. It
cost Him blood . . . Oh, take the Fatherhood of God
in the blessed Son the Saviour, and by the Holy Ghost
rejoice, rejoice, rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing
else. Bow down your heads and your hearts before
God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done."
" Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done." We pray
HE SHALL BEAR THE GLORY 299
it over every day. God means us to help to answer our
own prayers. " He shall bear the glory," we read, " and
shall sit and rule upon His throne. And they that are
afar off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord."
The vision closes with the words : " And this shall come
to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord
your God." What if Time, as we look back upon it
from " the land of far distances," will seem but a little
hollow scooped out on the plain of Eternity, for the
building work to be done ? And what if somewhere in
the temple wall there is something still unfinished which
we were meant to do, and would be doing now if we
were diligently obeying the voice of the Lord our God ?
Some may read this who seem debarred from taking
their share in the building work. Their walk is through
the " common days and level stretches white with dust."
There seems no outlet possible for the pent-up love and
the longing :
" Lo amid the press,
The whirl and hum arid pressure of my day,
I hear Thy garments sweep : Thy seamless dress ;
And close beside my work and weariness
Discern Thy gracious form."
One so near as to be discernible will speak in words
that can be understood, and tell the one who loves Him,
how, even so, there is a way to build.
And some may read for whom four walls shut out all
the busy world. There was one such who wrote :
" Down the lone pass of pain I found
Christ came, and made it holy ground."
Down the lone pass of pain he walked, and it led to a
300 THE SONG OF THE LORD
room where no door ever opened to the outer world
again. But something passed through the walls of that
room, and out and away beyond all space, and the
corning of the Kingdom is the nearer to-day for what
happened in that room.
But others will read who know as they read that the
call has come to rise and go to the further part of the
hollow. Oh, let us be in earnest ! Life is not play.
There are playful moments in it, but taken as a whole it
is an awful thing — this one brief life. Do not let us
play away such an opportunity. Master, if it be
Thou, bid me come unto Thee upon the water . . .
Lord, I come.
And now, not in a clear and open atmosphere, but
through the murk and the mist and the darkness " We
praise Thee, 0 God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.
Thy name shall endure for ever. Thy name shall be
continued as long as the sun : and men shall be blessed
in Thee : all nations shall call Thee blessed. Blessed
be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth
wondrous things. And blessed be His glorious name :
and let the whole earth be filled with His glory ; Amen
and Amen."
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